


these lights burn brightest

by ms bricolage (onefootforward), onefootforward



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Assassins & Hitmen, F/M, Gun toting lovebirds, Is there an actually tag I can use?, nikita au!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-04
Updated: 2015-02-20
Packaged: 2018-02-19 19:47:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2400704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onefootforward/pseuds/ms%20bricolage, https://archiveofourown.org/users/onefootforward/pseuds/onefootforward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>ahaha whoops i'm bad at posting things??? WELL THEN. act iii!</p></blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

 

 **act i;** or how the basement in interrogations smells, unnecessarily, like blood and tears, probably, and as if that’d ever be incentive to stick around

* * *

 

 _scene i:_  the players are set as thus: one younger woman, blonde, strapped to a chair and pointedly Not Amused, two adults – one male, dark skin and furrowed brows, hands clasped behind his back, and one female, with hair braided tightly out of her face, showcasing an inscrutable but steady expression which is trained on the teenager.

(all in all, nothing unexpected, given present circumstances)

* * *

 

 

The two figures are blurry until they’re not, and as soon as her vision has cleared itself of the fissures caused by the butt of a gun against the line of her jaw, she groans.

It’s not the pain, she tells herself – although that  _is_  a bitch and she’s going to have to use some serious foundation to cover up the bruise she’s already certain is forming – it’s the fact that  _of fucking course_ they couldn’t send Shumway or someone just a little less personal to interrogate her. Someone that doesn’t cause the muted ire that she shoves back down her throat, deep into the pit of her stomach, to flare and spark and honestly, she just really hates losing her cool.

She probably could have cracked Shumway, mind you – that man has always had too many agendas underneath his skin, and maybe that’s why she gets this sparkling duo instead.

"That was a reckless move agent, going after the commander." The man says, pacing closer.

 _Prisoner_ , she thinks _, I’m the prisoner_.

She grins instead, showing a row of pearly whites spotted with red, resists the urge to spit out the blood onto Jaha’s pristine shoes – it’d be petty, and she’s doing her best to avoid that these days. “Effective though.”

What she means to say is – who else knew that Kane had murdered his pet project, hundreds of nameless people consumed by a serum never meant to see the light of day? Because now the whole world did.

"That’s the thing about national broadcasts," she goes on, ignoring the twinge in her shoulders as she leans forward, "they’re sort of public."

She’s sees it coming – of course she does, she was trained in this mode of communication after all – but she can’t stop the fist that hits her jaw. She moves with it to minimize the pain as best she can, though the blow still cuts open a new wound on her lips, blood pooling in her mouth and dribbling down her chin.

"It accomplished nothing," Jaha crowds closer to her, whispers in her ear, "except now we’ve captured you and Kane is hundreds of miles away in deep cover. You’ve done  _nothing_.”

She swallows back the blood. “I’ve pissed you off.”

She means for it to come out with more heat than resignation, but there’s an equal mixture of both. Whatever. She’d be angrier if she wasn’t so damned tired – being knocked unconscious and dragged three miles underground does that to a girl.

Jaha looks ready to do something murderous, literally, they’re probably going to terminate her after they’ve stolen all her secrets, but Abby lays a hand on his shoulder and says something to him, too low for Clarke to pick up. It works, unfortunately, because Jaha shoots her one last theatrical look (they’ve always been his weak spot, his need to be melodramatic about  _everything_ ) and stalks out.

Leaving Clarke with the last person she wants to talk to. Fabulous.

She refuses to say the first word, so it’s silent for a moment. Abby looks at her in the way that only Abby can – as if absolutely none of this is her fault, as if she hadn’t raised Clarke to turn into this, and yet somehow Clarke has still managed to disappoint her.

"Clarke," Abby starts, and  _fuck_ , it’s so patronizing, she feels actual hairs on the nape of her neck rise with her temper, “what have you done?”

She shrugs. “I thought that was pretty obvious.”

Abby waves a hand aimlessly, the first movement she’s made since Clarke’s woken up that hasn’t been carefully calculated. “Don’t be like this, you know what I’m talking about.”

"Is this why you made Jaha leave? Because I thought that’d be pretty obvious as well."

“ _Clarke_.”

She leans back in the chair, straining the bindings on her wrist.

"We thought you had died," she continues, she’s still a respectable distance away that Clarke can’t head-butt her, though she shuffles a little closer, " _I_  thought you had died.”

The blood is dripping onto her pants – they’re light grey, and the red shows up like a ten-foot sign that says  _this is wrong_ , and  _remember, remember_  and Clarke hisses, “ _Good_.”

"So instead – , “Abby steps forward, hands folded gently together in front of her, “instead, you went rogue. Left the program."

"Program? What  _program_?” Clarke laughs. “The program where I had no choice but to join? The one where I kill for you and you  _lie_  to me?” She keeps laughing, even though it’s tipped from funny to hysterical.

Fuck. She probably should have found a therapist or something before coming back here. The last thing she needs is for any of them to think she  _cares_  that she’s been fucked over.

"Honey," Abby starts, her voice soft and motherly and  _betrayed_ , which is fucking typical, isn’t it, “Clarke, you have this all wrong – “

She’s finally moved close enough though that Clarke can surge forward, swipe her feet underneath Abby’s and knock her off balance – as  _if_  she’s going to pass that opportunity up – and Abby falls forward, towards her. Clarke drives a knee up into her stomach, satisfied with the pained grunt that comes out of her mother’s mouth.

It’s almost worth the electrical shock that follows, the current that runs through her body a direct response to the bruise forming on Abby’s stomach. She’s only hanging onto consciousness with the tips of her fingers, and this is enough,  _enough_ , that blackness spots her vision, slowly takes over.

She passes out.

 

* * *

_scene ii:_  same location, young woman slowly waking up, still bound to the chair; in the opposite corner, covered (obstinately) in the shadows, is a male, roughly a few years older.

(what an  _asshole_ )

* * *

 

 

She peels open an eye and immediately regrets the decision, the throbbing in her head accompanied only by the soreness in her limbs. She hopes her fingers still work because otherwise this whole thing is screwed, and Jasper is going to have to come in, guns blazing. Which, knowing Jasper, would be a literal example, and entirely unsuccessful.

Like, he has a heart of gold, but the solution isn’t  _always_  ’blow the thing up’.

Out of pure stubbornness she forces herself to keep her eyes open, because there’s probably a security recording or some two-way wall shit going on, and she hates backing down more than she hates that ridiculous shock-torture system that Jaha had installed years earlier, at the suggestion of his twat of a son. She scrunches her nose as she slowly welcomes consciousness again – someone’s washed the blood off her face.

"I see you haven’t changed that much then," an exasperated voice says.

She blinks and tries to see into the darkness.

"You always used to do that," it continues, and the figure steps out of the shadows, "make these ridiculous expressions that totally don’t suit the situation."

Clarke inhales through her nose, quick, to stench the gasp that wants to unfurl in her throat – she doesn’t know why she didn’t think they’d send him down. Probably because she might actually  _want_  to see him (the horror) and she’s fairly gung ho about the fact that no one in this place is willing to give her what she wants.

(The thing is though, she isn’t sure she  _does_  want to see him, it’s one of those bittersweet things that reminds her too violently that her time here wasn’t  _all_  bad, just, y’know, ninety-nine percent awful)

"Bellamy," she goes with, her voice still too breathy, "how’s it going?"

He looks the same as when she left – stuffy suit on, hair gelled back and swept out of his face, one hand in his pocket (near his hip – easy gun access). The smirk on his face is gratifyingly more brittle than before, but it doesn’t stop the smarmy, “oh you know, just capturing my dead agents, nothing major,” that tumbles out of his throat.

Jerk.

They do this – the polite banter – back and forth for a few minutes before it gets to be too much, and he goes, “so,” with a smile that is more of a veneer on top of hatred, pain, envy even, maybe, “what the fuck have you been up to lately?”

She’s been counting the rows of her teeth to check that everything’s still there, and admiring the way Bellamy’s jaw clenches right before he’s about to lose his cool, it’s really satisfying actually, but probably not what he wants to hear. Instead she settles for a, “Systematic destruction of the establishment which removes us of our freedoms. Tuesday stuff, you understand how it is.”

"I don’t have time for your pandering Clarke," he scowls, "Do you know how much shit you’re in?"

“Defcon three stuff I’d think.”

If he remembers their younger days of studying US military systems outside of A.R.K. Division knowledge, of late nights and stolen food and unusually light laughs, he doesn’t show it. She knows that they’re most likely on the clock, that there is no scenario in which Jaha would be okay with his foot soldier taking up precious torture-time with his least-favourite – well, what would it be, niece? Daughter-in-law? Rouge agent? Still, if this was going to happen, she’d need more time.

“They’re going to neutralize you,” he says without flinching, which, bully for him.

She means to make some quip, something at least slightly witty, because that’s important in their line of work –  _what, no wake first_ or _is this how you tell all of your former-trainees or am I just special_  – but what comes out of her mouth is, “Why are you still here Bellamy?”

“Pardon?”

“Here,” she clarifies, “with these people. In this place.”

He narrows his gaze. “You know why.”

She thinks back to her first kill, and the way he had taken her to her apartment straight afterwards, ordered her into the shower and cooked stir fry while she accepted this new title of hers,  _murderer_ , and she tries a different tactic.

“You always knew the truth, didn’t you?” She smiles wanly. “About…everything. All of this farce about  _for your country_ , you always knew that was a lie.”

“So did you.” He states – never was one to give her leeway. “You just were willing to ignore it.”

There’s a list, somewhere, in her head or his, she’s not sure. It’s of all the things they know but have never said, goes something like:

                 _1) Bellamy plays possum for retribution, Bellamy lies better than any other field agent (even her mother)_

_2) The only way out of the A.R.K. Division business is in a casket, it’s a big joke on ‘blood in blood out’, for a reformed-criminal group like theirs_

_3) Jake Griffin did not, in fact, suffer a coronary infarction, despite popular belief_

_4) Clarke Griffin did not, in fact, drown, despite popular belief_

There’s more to it, smaller things like how Clarke can’t throw a knife to save her life (or someone else’s) or that Bellamy refuses to let anyone in the Division cut his hair, but these are the important ones. The Big Deals that Clarke needs to keep in the front of her mind, things she refuses to ever forget.

There should be a little coda on it though – a  _3a)_   _ignorance kills more than they do._ It’s difficult to deceive a professional liar, so she doesn’t argue his point, especially since it’s true. It burns, it happens to be her biggest regret in this last  _decade_  of things to be remorseful over, but it’s true and she refuses to back away from the truth any longer.

So she, foolish, says, “They’re lying you know. About Octavia.”

He growls. Like, actually  _snarls_. It’s taboo, to mention things like this, but whatever he means to say is cut off by a distant rumble, the sound of cement and concrete collapsing in on each other. Clarke throws her body backwards just as one of the wall cracks straight down the middle, rubble cascading everywhere.

It’s a mess, and she uses Bellamy’s momentary lapse in focus and her current position to break the final clasp on her cuffs, the one which routes the current through her body, and sprawls over to her side to begin working on the ones on her legs. If Jasper was right, which, he usually is when it comes to stuff which explodes, she only has a few minutes to get herself off of the premises.

Just as she gets the restraints free and her body vertical again, there’s the cold press of metal on skin, and she glances over only to stare down the barrel of Bellamy’s gun. He’s frowning at her, his thoughts are almost tangible in the air around them – she’s not going very far with her guess that there is probably a lot of cussing being thrown about.

“What, you’re going to kill me? You’re kind of a shitty handler Blake.”

“You’re not my agent,” he presses harder, just  _great_ , she’s going to have another bruise, “You’re going to explain what you meant.”

She wants to say  _would if I could_ , but even that takes up too much time. She uses her right hand, the one still attached to the broken arm of the chair, and swings the whole thing into his face.

It’s not enough to take him out, not nearly, but he doesn’t fire at her as he falls so she figures she’s safe. She runs towards the door, dust pouring around them as more of the room breaks apart – it isn’t going to collapse on him, she knows, yet she can’t help but spare a last glance as she reaches the exit.

“Find me,” she says “if you want to know more, you’ll have to find me.”

She can hear his shout as she leaves, but like she’s said, she’s on the clock. She doesn’t want to be under the A.R.K.’s roof any longer than necessary.

 

* * *

 

_scene iii:_  the location changes slightly, there are two figures in the front of a car, scenery speeding outside; young female is sitting in the passenger seat, covered in dirt and other unmentionables, with new blood stains on her left shoulder and forearm, while driver has wide eyes, trembling hands, and an absolutely manic grin on his face.

* * *

 

 

“Operations collapsed first, before holding.” She says, poking her finger through one of the new holes in her jacket.

Jasper grins. “Yeah it did.”

“Nice touch.”

They high-five, despite speeding down the highway, despite the fact that Jasper is wearing his  _ridiculous_  goggles on top of his head and she really shouldn’t be doing anything other than giving him shit for that. But there’s something about Jasper that makes her want to indulge him, to let him go on a six-week energy drink binge despite her better judgment.

Like, she  _doesn’t_ , but the important point is that sometimes she wants to anyway.

He takes a sharp corner and it throws her against the car door, thankfully against her good arm, jarring her out of her thoughts.

“So,” Jasper asks, “mission successful?”

“Woah there,” she mutters, as the scrape past the meridian.

“Clarke?”

She glances over at him, then reaches into the hidden pocket in her cargo pants and pulls out a black box. “One encrypted hunk of plastic, just for you.”

“And it’s – “

“The Phoenix one. No worries, every dirty secret we never knew we wanted to know is on this bad boy.”

Jasper whoops. “That is fucking  _awesome_ , you are a champion of my heart Clarke.”

“Just  _a_  champion?” She arches an eyebrow.

“Well,” he shrugs, which  _really_ , can he just not, while they’re doing ninety, “you know.”

She – oh, loose lips and all. She grimaces. “Yeah, I do.”

She never saw Monty on her way out, they’d evacuated him by the time she’d managed to slip into Operations. She reaches forward and lays her hand on Jasper’s shoulder, “We’ll get to him.”

“One criminal element at a time, hey?” He side eyes her then, just as she tucks the box back, “Did you see…?”

She nods. “They brought Bellamy to interrogation.”

“Ouch,” he mutters, “that’s harsh.”

This time she’s the one to shrug, because like, what can you do? Clarke resolutely refuses to use any hand gestures at  _all_  while describing her little escapade, and she’s been trying to use less pet names lately as well, so she bites back the  _whatever punk_  that forms at her lips - her father was always like that, all  _Clarke, baby, did you know that the Pentagon was built to withstand equine attack_ while he made little five-sided shapes in the air. Abby had picked up on it, she’s picked up on a lot of mannerisms that Clarke hadn’t remembered they’d shared.

“It’ll work out.” She says, smiling, because they  _won_  this round, c’mon Clarke. “One criminal element at a time.”


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

 

 **act ii;** or that time that Clarke stayed in hotel rooms for six months, and silently thanked her mother for the siphoned cash by sending her exploding parcels

* * *

_scene i:_ the room is ostentatious in every language, of course it is, it’s somewhere in Eastern Europe and everything is marble and gold – which isn’t as out-of-place as the two guns both individuals have pointed towards each other; one, female, hair pinned up and dressed in a royal blue dress, and the other, male, in work pants and scruff.

(“miss me yet?”)

* * *

 

“What,” he grinds out, arm extended, “are you doing here?”

Upon taking in the decidedly unhappy expression, Clarke keeps her gun out as well. She trots into the room on steady heels, kicking the door shut behind her as she enters.

“Hey now, I thought we’d agreed to share Europe.” She says, her glossed lips sticking together on the  _p_.

When he continues to stare at her, lips white as they press tightly together, she smiles wider. “Come on darling, you have to abide by the terms of the divorce.”

It works. Somewhat. His mouth turns down in something that is closer to a snarl than a frown. “This isn’t – “

“I know,” she cuts him off, “this isn’t the time.”

It’s funny – that had been  _such_  a great expression in their old days. He’d never grown tired of it, even during some of her less serious moments. All,  _Ms. Griffin, this is hardly the time to be stopping for a coffee break_  or  _do you really think this is the time to be painting your toes_  (they’d been embroiled in a high speed car chase at the time, but he’d said it with the resignation of someone who didn’t expect a response). The one she’d heard the most frequently of course was her favourite –  _Clarke, this isn’t the time to be drawing moustaches on your family portraits._  Mostly because, well, it had implied that there one day might  _be_  a time for that sort of thing.

(Clarke’s grin dims somewhat as she takes in the stubble lining Bellamy’s jaw – she’d never be able to defile  _his_  pictures, mostly because she’d known him only as an A.R.K. agent, and agents didn’t _have_  physical evidence of their existences.)

“If you know, then why are you here?”

She shrugs – wishes again that there were easier ways to re-holster, but dresses like hers were a bitch for hiding artillery. “Matrimonial commitment?”

“Matri – fuck, Clarke, I mean it. I can’t deal with your renegade bullshit today.”

It’s nice, how he doesn’t threaten to kill her out-right – it’s so two months ago Bellamy and Clarke, after that rough patch where Clarke shot him in the leg and he blew up her apartment. “I’m not here with ‘renegade bullshit’.” She frowns. “Actually, it’s never bullshit, it’s justice.”

Bellamy raises an eyebrow. Clarke simpers. “Okay,” she admits, “justice, revenge, it’s all semantics.”

They stare off at each for another long minute (Clarke knows, she counts down from sixty, it’s awkward), and she heaves a dramatic sigh at the stubborn clench in Bellamy’s jawline.  _What_  a pain.

She knows full well that unless she wants to flash the room – the room being her pissed-off former trainer, and two bottles of complementary whiskey ( _Europeans, man_ ) – she’s only got one option really. She doesn’t trust Bellamy not to shoot her while she re-holsters, so she places her gun slowly to the ground and once she’s straightened out she kicks it over to him.

––which, just,  _c’mon_ , she should get bonus points for that, does no one respect how difficult it is to do that in  _heels_?

He watches her as it clatters next to his feet, only bothering to acknowledge the move when it hits him in the ankle. They gaze at each other for another long minute (okay, thirty-two seconds this time) before Clarke says, “I’m here to help.”

“Bullshit.” He says immediately. “We only just got the tip off.”

“Well if your intel wasn’t  _shit_  – “

“Our intel is just fine, you just happen to be batting for the other team.”

The opening is too easy so she doesn’t take it. “The other team?”

See, the thing is, she got her information from Raven, who is _supposed_  to be an A.R.K. agent, and since neither Raven nor Clarke is dead, she doesn’t think that’s who Bellamy’s talking about. She flips through her mental map of the last two months, the time since she’d last seen him, and it clicks with an absurd sort of clarity.

“ _Zemla_?” She cries. “You think I’m working with the Russians?”

He just shrugs a little, daring her to refute it. Which,  _duh_ , she totally does. Because honestly, Zemla is almost as bad as the A.R.K. Division.

Without a gun in her hand she’s got little else to do with them other than hold them up in supplicating and totally false surrender. “I’m not working with the Russians. I’m pretty sure that option was off the table when Anya put out a hit on me.”

“Shouldn’t have shot down their operative then,” Bellamy retorts, but it isn’t as harsh as before.

Clarke just waves her hand vaguely as if to say  _international terrorists, what can you do_. She’d been making a mental note  _not_  to be so aggravatingly ambiguous, but it is hard to keep to her commitments when there is a gun in her face.

“I’m only here to help Bellamy.”

His arm wavers. “How can I trust you – “ he accuses, “how can I trust someone who has done nothing but lie to me?”

“I wouldn’t, not about this.” She chances another step towards him, palms still up, “You shouldn’t do it alone.”

“You knew.” He says, with the brittle composure of someone who’s realized it long before. “You knew back in holdings, you told me they were lying but you didn’t tell me.”

“I  _tried_ ,” she insists.

“But you didn’t.”

And, well, it’s the truth. But you don’t just drop a bomb like  _oh you know that dead sister of yours, yeah, not so dead_ , while your partner-in-crime is dropping a  _literal_  bomb at that same moment. It would’ve been worse. Like, Bellamy-charging-into-battle-at-the-exact-wrong-time worse.

She drops her hands altogether, close enough now to see the freckles scattered across the bridge of his nose, the bruise fading out of existence on the underside of his jaw. “I wanted to.”

“That doesn’t count for shit Clarke and you know it.”

“Let me help,” she wheedles, “for  _her_ , let me help.”

And in the beats between  _Octavia, Octavia, Octavia_  she sees resignation draw itself upon his face. She spares a brief moment to be grateful that he’s already made some semblance of peace with her truth before this, and then Bellamy scowls and drops the gun. “I don’t need your help.” He mutters petulantly.

“I told you, matrimonial commitment. I  _need_  to help you.”

“ _God_  I forgot what a pain in the ass you are.”

She nods her head and watches carefully as he re-holsters his gun (suits man, they’re so much better equipped). “It’s been too long then.”

(and okay, a tiny part of her hopes that if they wrap this up, if they dig deep enough to the entire truth and Octavia is safe, then Bellamy can be done with A.R.K.; it’s not as tiny of a piece that she thinks what she’s doing is selfless, but it’s small enough and desperate enough that she’s willing to go along with this)

So when he glances back at her, face marginally more relaxed, she grins with too many teeth. “Okay hubby, what’s the plan?”

(They should probably add another bullet to their list;

 _5) Clarke hates Bellamy, but only because she loves him_ )

 

* * *

_scene ii:_ the room has vaulted ceilings and priceless artwork on the walls, yet is easily eclipsed by the following: one) young female operative gone rouge, blonde hair curled into ringlets and tumbling down her back, brushing softly against exposed skin, the dress she’s wearing held together by classy straps and well-wishes; two) older male operative, not yet gone anywhere, hair styled in a quasi-undercut that screams American fashion, adorned in a black tux and tails that shames the under-dressed; both speak in low tones to one another.

* * *

 

"What do you think, bag ‘em and bounce?"

Bellamy tucks his arm more firmly around her waist and draws her close, leaning down to whisper, “Try for more subtlety and less man-power.”

She smiles placidly. “Excuse you, I could have three of them bound and helpless before you could swindle the fourth one away.”

"Only to have at least two of them escape while you try to extract them."

Clarke raises an eyebrow at him, the easy grin dropping as she turns in further. “Is that a challenge Mr. Blake?”

He chuckles. “For another mission.”

"Ah," she says, letting her gaze sweep the room, "running scared I see."

They both know the truth: any mission but this mission, and also see: as if there will be another mission besides this mission. But it’s the thought that counts, and banter is easy when ideas are scarce.

The problem isn’t finding Octavia, oddly enough. Clarke had asked around earlier, because she’d tangled with Anya enough times to know that almost every layman in a rest spot was one bought and placed under her thumb, and the consensus had been simple. There is indeed a younger woman who follows the Russians during their off-periods, when missions aren’t necessary or just aren’t going on, and who calls herself Blake with a sneer and a wad of hundreds. Not quite the picture Bellamy has been painting these last years, but accurate enough. The hotel they’re in happens to be home base to most of Zemla, not operations, surely Clarke would never be that lucky, but at least if not operations than operatives. As soon as Bellamy had gotten Monty to confirm that the Russian rivals weren’t in any active missions, finding Ms. Blake’s hotel room had been relatively simple.

So no. The problem is not  _where is Bellamy’s dead-not-dead-sister_ but rather  _how do we take out five armed guards without them knowing_.

Yeah, Clarke has  _so_  had easier problems.

"I’m thinking foxtail."

She glances up in surprise, tearing her gaze away from Thug Number Four. “Really?”

He smiles at her, a simpering, utterly non-complacent grin. “Yeah.”

Despite the demographic of the room – middle aged, mixed ethnicities, and mostly Zemla agents plus their respective arm candy – no one’s clued in to their identities. Clarke attributes this to her fabulous make-up abilities, the likes of which can fool probably every half-hearted enemy the two of them have, and the fact that Anya is out of town. The only person who knows her by face is the Russian mob boss, so Bellamy’s idea isn’t  _crazy_  per se…just incredibly risky. A lot more so than his usual play book.

She chances a serious look at him. “You do realize that will get me _killed_ , right?”

His mouth settles in a confusing little pursed grimace, and then he tugs at her waist. It’s startling enough to draw her out of thoughts of  _a vulpine is crafty fox, a fox is a term to describe an attractive individual with sensual charms_ , and before she clues in he has his hand on her waist, her hand tucked into the other one, and they’re twirling around the room.

She uses the opportunity to pick a target – Thug Number Seven was looking particularly sloshed this fine evening.

“You think it’s too dangerous.”

His voice is pitched low and spoken directly into her ear. Clarke keeps her eyes trained on her John and waits until the next spin to catch his eye.

“It’s not that,” she confesses, softening her face and staring over Bellamy’s shoulder, “I mean, all of our options are dangerous.”

He presses his cheek into the side of her hair. “This one more so.”

Typically, in a situation like this, Bellamy would draw back, would offer her an out or an alternative, though one which wouldn’t be nearly so effective should it succeed. Typically, Bellamy didn’t  _enjoy_ risking her life, which was why she’d gotten along so well with him during their A.R.K. days, and also why she’d fought with him the most.

Typically, she wouldn’t have to agree to this. But this is hardly typical.

When Thug Number Seven grins back at her, lecherously and with far too much gesturing, Clarke steps out of Bellamy’s arms and raises her gaze.

She smiles at him, distantly polite, a fire kindled in her eyes. “I’ll meet you at home then. Cargo potentially in possession.”

There’s something heart-breaking in the look he gives her. He reaches for her hand as she moves to pass him, the song fading away into the next in the background, and whispers in her ear. It’s a thanks, and it isn’t really enough.

He drops a kiss to her temple and she walks away.

But it’s okay. It’s for Octavia. It’s for the Blakes.

It has to be okay.

 

* * *

_scene iii:_ some forest or another, in Russia of course, because this was a shit mission from the start, gone downhill from day one, and all they need is a bottle of Vodka and the ever-present chill of winter for this scene to cap off perfectly.

* * *

 

Clarke furiously swipes at the beads of sweat collecting on her upper brow, threating her sense of sight with a rather precarious notion of gravity and inopportune timing. The motion is a mistake in itself however, the slight show of skin enough of a flash to alight her tracker to her presence again, and the onslaught of bullets and strangled shouts are on her in moments.

Fuck her skin-tone. Seriously, she’d be so much less pasty if she hadn’t been cooped up in hotels for the last seven months, trailing the wisps of a lead in the hope that it would lead her to a solution. For all the fucking good it did her, seeing as she’s presently being shot at _by_  the very person she’d hoped to help.

She ducks behind another shrub – hardly the greatest cover, if she’s being honest here – and taps a finger harshly against the com in her ear. “Moonshine, tell me we have a plan.”

She can hear Jasper’s grimace in the shade his words takes as he replies,  _“Uhm, working on it, promise.”_

A stray bullet clips the trunk of the tree next to her, drawing a thin line of blood from her cheek as it grazes its way past her. “Could you hurry it up please?”

_“Hey, you try finding an escape route in the middle of nowhere on the fly, with trained assassins on your quarry’s ass, and tell me how it goes.”_

“I  _am_  a trained assassin Jas,” she hisses in exasperation, “not quarry. And I just need you to tell me where to run.”

Bellamy’s shouts are becoming more distinctive now, and Jasper chuckles wryly. _“Away, I think.”_

“Not helpful.”

_“I know. Give me a sec.”_

She clicks out of the conversation with a clench of her jaw, and turns her attention to the words being hurled at her. Slightly better than bullets, because while the barbed slights hurt her emotionally, they don’t particularly impinge her ability to flee the scene.

“This is  _over_  Clarke,” Bellamy hollers, and she winces in retaliation, “there’s nowhere to run to.”

 _Oh that’s what_ you _think_. But she’s out of bullets and out of ideas, and he has a point honestly.

Like. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. But Bellamy’s a martyr when it comes to his sister apparently, and just because  _he_ was willing to fall on the sword so that Octavia could be forcibly extracted from the life she apparently  _wanted_ , didn’t mean that Clarke was going to actually let him.

Ugh. The idiot.

She snarls mutinously down at her own rifle, the empty clip aggravating in the face of her situation. Throwing it away would be a shame– it cost a shit ton of money she doesn’t have, plus then Bellamy might know that she’s been buying from the Germans, and she doesn’t really need Bellamy to know more than strictly necessary right now. But it’s a heavy weight she doesn’t particularly want either.

Jasper’s side of the conversation is quiet however, so she’s running out of options.

Three quick rounds lodge themselves into the ground near Clarke’s hand, and she figures it’s time to change up her game plan.

“Bellamy!” She shouts, twisting out of her covering when the barrage of rounds aim in that direction – seriously, where is he getting all this ammo? “Look, you little shit, it isn’t the end. You’ll get another chance.”  _A different chance_ , she thinks, and her mind flits back to the angry look on Octavia’s face when they’d pulled her into the room.

 _(“Seriously? You’re trying to tell me that I_ want _to leave?” She scoffs, black hair tumbling in an angry swirl around her shoulders. “That’s such bullshit. These people are my family. And who are you? You’re just a stranger.”)_

It had to be some blend of mind games and honesty, for the way Bellamy had recoiled in the barrage of vicious words. Surely it couldn’t be  _entirely_  true, because Bellamy had been fighting tooth and nail for the mere chance to  _avenge_  his sister, let alone rescue her. But, well, Clarke had known Bellamy for the better part of five years, five years where he definitely had  _not_  known his sister was alive, and for a scrap of a teenage girl, barely an adult, that had to seem like a lifetime apart.

–and also  _not_  what she should be thinking about at the moment, she admits, as one of the gunshots rams itself into the flesh of her upper arm.

Clarke groans and presses her free hand onto the wound, blinking back dry eyes. 

“Another  _chance_?” Bellamy snarls, managing to be both scathing  _and_ disbelieving in the face of her optimism. Well, her attempts at deflecting  _with_  optimism, but that’s unimportant. “ _This_  was my chance. And you  _ruined_  it.”

She can’t help herself – she’s an idiot too, after all. “Ruined it? I saved your life asshole!”

“I had her!” He cries, “I had her and you helped her escape!”

She thinks the truth is tucked in there somewhere, in the phrasing and the reality, but this isn’t the time.

There’s so much pain in his voice as he repeats, “I  _had_  her.”

“You didn’t.” She says into the quiet, and it swirls onto the sharp breeze of the winter afternoon, skirts through the forest that they’re currently hurtling through. Bellamy doesn’t reply right away, but he doesn’t shoot at her again either, even though Clarke’s pretty certain he knows where she’s hiding.

Suddenly Jasper’s in her ear again.  _“Okay, I got it. You’ve gotta head west though, like, five clicks?”_

Clarke glances up and yup, west would be where Bellamy is currently standing. She chances a look at him, and he’s close enough to her position that she spots the full epaulet of rounds the circles his chest – he’s staring down at the ’47 in his hand though, maybe because of her words, maybe because he’s trying to reconcile the last few weeks together and the fact that he’s probably going to kill her in the next ten minutes.

Right. The situation at hand.

“Alright, hang on,” she hisses into the com, quietly, “let me try something.”

Jaspers mumbling in her ear about  _suicidal assassins, why do I deal with you lot_ , but she ignores it in favour of standing up and turning around.

“Bellamy,” she tries, and his eyes shoot up to hers, smoldering hatred and trapped animal all in one fell swoop, “you couldn’t just kidnap her – she didn’t want to come with us.”

It’s the wrong thing to say.

“ _Us_  – oh for fuck’s sake Clarke.” He lifts the gun up and snarls, right in her face – even though they must be at least twenty feet apart. “What the fuck do you know about it? The only family you have is a psychotic mother who killed her husband and put a hit out on her daughter.”

Clarke bristles. “Now listen here you shitty excuse – ”

“And then,” Bellamy chuckles, darkly and in the middle of her insult, “then she shacks up with Jaha.  _Jaha_. Bet you he was the one who killed your ol’ man in the first place.”

Jasper whistles in her ear.  _“Wow, that’s a low blow man.”_

“Yeah, and fucking uncalled for. Why the  _fuck_ ,” she raises her voice, so Bellamy can hear her, “do I have to keep proving myself to you?”

Bellamy stares at her coldly. It’s an awful look on him, Clarke thinks, a terrible alteration to the usual piss-poor anger that heats his bones, passion in everything he does.

Except when he kills her, apparently.

“You took my sister away.” He says, matter-of-factly. He pulls the artillery onto his shoulder and she smirks.

“Overkill, isn’t that?” She says, glancing at the gun.

The AK-47’s are a little outdated, but Russians love them, and Anya tended to hide spare ones in really obvious places, like in AED compartments and tucked next to the fire extinguishers. When they’d fled the scene of their crime, Clarke’s holler alerting at least seven Zemla agents to the current predicament, there hadn’t been time for much else.

Bellamy doesn’t even humor her with a response. Jasper’s murmurs in her ear take a darker turn as he listens to the exchange, turns from vaguely annoyed worry to outright frenetic panic as the sound of a round goes off, and Clarke’s breath is torn from her chest.

She flies from her spot, the bullet hitting her directly in her upper right quadrant, and she watches the world tilt on its axis, the blue of the sky juxtaposed with the pain shooting up her arm, and thanks the deities for the invention of Kevlar.

(She gets away – she’s Clarke Griffin, trained from birth, of course she gets away. But Bellamy returns to A.R.K. and Clarke spends six weeks recovering from the beating she takes as she pushes her way through one pissed off brother spy, and the entire off-force of the Zemla organization.

It isn’t a win. And in her world, that means she’s lost.)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ahaha whoops i'm bad at posting things??? WELL THEN. act iii!

* * *

**act iii;** when everyone gets together, and shit falls apart.

* * *

_scene i:_  an air duct, about the size of one female agent, give or take the room needed to exhale deep, steady breaths; one blonde, visual-feed goggles strapped to her face and totally giving her the worst perma-indents all along her cheek, sliding herself farther into said air duct as she swears, somewhat subtly, at her crack team

* * *

"I don’t think this is a good idea."

_"You never think I have good ideas,"_

"That," she replies, eyes on the inner pocket of Senator Dante, "is patently not true. Remember Serbia?"

Over the com Raven grumbles,  _"Well, okay, but since I am literally from Serbia that doesn’t really count. I mean, you had to agree with me."_

"And Egypt? That was all you."

 _"I had A.R.K. intel then, so you weren’t really agreeing with me so much as your –_ jesus _, why am I even arguing with you, just listen to me. This is a_ great  _idea.”_

Clarke hums something noncommittal and Raven goes,  _"C’mon. Repeat after me oh-mighty-leader. This is a good idea."_

Like – she’s honestly in an air duct right now, and that isn’t some metaphor for a tough situation or an impossible choice, she’s  _in a literal air duct and there is dust everywhere_ , and Clarke sighs out a sulky, “Fine. This is a good idea.” The image in her visor flickers, the pasty white face of three more members filing into the ballroom popping up in between so much static and she tacks on, “Possibly.”

_"I’ll take it."_

She manages to twist her arm up to tap on the side of her goggles and switches to Jasper’s line, “Moonshine, what’s with the feed?”

 _"Don’t worry, but like, you’re in a_ really  _shitty spot for reception. Bonus note, only really great techs can triangulate your location.”_  Jasper quips.

"That’s… _fuck_  – ” her next breath out manages to pin her at an awkward angle between roof and left-side corner, and this is  _such a fucking shit idea_ , “oh wait, no, I’ve got a visual now,”

_"Yeah, Raven’s begun to move in on the target."_

Having Raven raid the A.R.K. supplies for gadgets and whatnot had been, by far, their best move since Oslo. Of course, nothing really could  _beat_  Oslo, because that was where Clarke got to blow up one of the Zemla main offices and also catch Jaha in the cross fire, and she’s pretty sure he’s  _still_  out of commission trying to treat the burns and it was just a great trip, honestly.

"Alright, open up the com to Raven."

_"Can’t you do that?"_

She sighs, “If you want me to  _dislocate my shoulder_ , probably, but I’m 97% sure that you’re sitting in your chair drinking Irish coffee shots right now so maybe you could just do this one,”

 _"I’m offended, I only do Irish coffee for_ morning _missions,”_  he replies, but in the next second Clarke can hear Raven greeting Bellamy, his face eclipsing the visual feed, and the world narrows in on them.

 _"– and then I’ll follow. Are you ready for this?"_  He’s asking.

The feed moves slightly, and Raven says,  _"Definitely. Meet you in five?"_

Bellamy nods, once, quick – he’s always been borderline abrupt on missions, half his mind on the multitude of ways the plan can fuck up, and the other half on how to drag everyone out of the cross-fire should it happen.  _"Any problems and you radio me right away. You understand?"_

She watches as Raven’s hand pops into view, resting briefly on Bell’s forearm,  _"I understand. Dude, chill,"_

Bellamy scowls, but evidently is placated enough to walk away. He’s just supervising this mission, on total lock down orders to  _not_  interfere with Raven’s progress unless absolutely necessary, which is just perfect for Clarke.

Double-agents man. They’re all the rage in the Eastern European world.

For some reason this makes Clarke giggle, and Raven taps a little tune on her necklace – where Clarke’s camera is located, so all she sees is the looming finger blocking her sight.

 _"Dude, don’t laugh at your own shit jokes,"_ she says, and begins to walk towards Senator Dante.

Clarke doesn’t bother defending herself, because firstly she knows they’re shit, and secondly…well, no one can  _prove_  that’s what she was doing, so it’s useless to argue. Also, see: mission currently in progress.

For once in her rogue-agent life, she’s not even here to fuck the game up. Dante is vile and slimy and someone Clarke already hates on principle - he does have the added factor of being an  _actually super fucked up dude_ , like, illegal experiments and a finger in every skeazy child-labour scheme the state has. Jaha and Abby want him out of the game for political reasons, something to do with his side projects drumming up too much momentum in the Presidential elect, but just this once Clarke can ignore that fact.

 _"Y’know_ ,” Jasper says,  _"Bellamy may still be with A.R.K. but he’s pretty much doing the exact same thing you are,_ ”

Clarke immediately frowns, “No, he’s in a fancy suit and I’m slowly getting compartmental bruising. It’s different.”

Like, she really thinks the part where she monitors  _from a vent_  is ridiculous, she would be so much more help out on the floor, or even as a fucking coat-check person,  _something_ , but ‘some people’ are worried that she might…oh who knows – jump Dante, or Bellamy for that matter, which is entirely the point she’s making here, which is…well, that Bellamy is an ass who she’s equal parts pissed at and worried for.

And what she really wants to say is  _I’m better_ , or  _at least I know the full story_ , but Jasper tends to see these rebuttals as proof that Clarke actively thinks about Bellamy, and even since Russia she’s been adamantly  _not_  doing that. So. Point.

Instead she goes for, “and also we’re just here to make sure Senator Shit-For-Brains ends up in a permanent coma, it’s not like, some sort of joint mission,”

Jasper makes a type of noise which is muffled through the com, but Clarke’s positive he’s laughing at her.

 _"Yeah,"_  he says,  _"maybe, only because you two have different motives right now. But I’d argue that you two definitely have joint_ custody _.”_

She pauses – her immediate response of  _the moment you say ‘but’ is the moment I stop trusting you_  stuck in her throat, and she has to ask, “Wait, what? Joint custody of who?”

 _"Duh, Raven_. _”_

"We do  _not_  have joint custody of Raven,” Clarke huffs.

 _"You totally do,_ " he replies, sounding both smug and cautious, which is probably wise – Clarke isn’t really over Russia yet.

"No, see, I would protect Raven at all costs while Bellamy would probably shoot her before letting her explain herself.”

Jasper sighs,  _“Yeah, whatever you say Mom,”_

Clarke stares through the visual feed and grumbles none-so-softly, “I am  _not_ married to Bellamy,”

It reeks too strongly of — just, she doesn’t want to joke about it.

Raven slips her arm through Dante’s while seamlessly swapping out his drink. Clarke watches with unmitigated glee as the Senator takes a sip, and then another – dude’s a bit of an overindulger.

 _“Note,_ ” he says, ” _just a note that your contention is not with the Mom title, but with Father dearest.”_

“Whatever,”

_“Just an observation.”_

* * *

_scene ii:_  hospital room, standard attire – cold, clinical room with white and light blue décor, machines humming and beeping; one: man, white hair and grey pallor, lying on the bed attached to several of aforementioned machines, and one: female nurse, blonde hair loosely tied into a bun, lavender scrubs, and a chart in hand.

(“The fuck does  _spirometry_  mean?”

“ _Not the point Clarke –_ “

“Wait, what – how about  _salbutivol_?”

“ _Clarke_ ,”)

* * *

In her total and utter defense, she had to do it. She  _had to_ . Clarke’s more than a little paranoid — she’s got the right history for it, plus there’s just something about spending the better part of your childhood learning  _100 ways to fuck a mission up_  that forces her to follow every loose end until she’s certain the job’s done. It’s — she  _had to do it_ .

And okay – you know what, hindsight is fucking twenty-twenty. Hindsight would acknowledge that she had had an idea – nay, a desire, a  _need_  – and it would’ve said  _Clarke, hun, you need to get some sleep or some food or maybe even check in with that crack program you call a team, but this is_ none of those things _so maybe you shouldn’t be doing it._

Clarke probably still wouldn’t have listened. But – technical detail.

She reads the chart out loud to Jasper for a few more moments and tries desperately hard  _not_  to notice the figure looming in the doorway. If she doesn’t pay attention to him, maybe he’ll finally just  _go away._

He doesn’t, which isn’t a surprise, but he doesn’t jump her right away either, which kind of is. Her eyes flit over the unconscious form of the Senator once more – sweet,  _sweet_  victory – and then with the willpower of a starving man, they glance over to Bellamy.

“Moonshine,” she says, eyes locked (damnit, she knew she should have put on a mask –  _something_ ), “the other half is here, I’m going to have to let you go.”

 _“The other – oh man, no_ way _, I told you this wasn’t going to – “_

“Dude,”

“ _Sorry just, okay. You’ve got ten minutes then I’m notifying emergency services_ ,”

Bellamy crosses his arms and raises an eyebrow and pretty much radiates disdain and immeasurable patience so Clarke has no choice but to frown.

“That’s hardly going to – “

_“Nah man, I mean Raven. Okay? Ten minutes.”_

She doesn’t have the chance to argue this – mostly because Jasper hangs up, also because arguing about her double agent  _in front of_  the man she’s deceiving would just be dumb, and Clarke is patently not dumb. Except when it comes to Bellamy.

Speaking of – “Fancy meeting you here,”

He nods, “Yeah, what a coincidence.”

She turns around to put the chart back on the hospital bed – and to loosen the knife on her forearm.

“So – your handy work?”

When she glances back at him he’s wandered further into the room. His eyes are on hers and not the Senator, which is as unsettling as it is infuriating and Clarke clamps her lips together because she has a really bad habit of babbling in these types of situations and she’s an  _assassin_ , god damnit, she knows how to be cool.

Bellamy closes the door behind him and Clarke resists the urge to kick him into the frame, or to try and leap out the window. They’re only on the second floor, so it  _might_  work, but that’s banking on a lot of factors least of which is the one where she’s certain Bell would follow her anyway.

Asshole.

“Not quite,” he says slowly, turning back around – well, opportunity lost, what can you do, “but you already knew that didn’t you?”

“What?”

And he grins, it’s pure malice, and right here is where she knows she’s fucked up.

( _Hindsight_ )

“Because of Raven,” he says, and shit Clarke, don’t jump to conclusions,  _don’t jump to conclusions_ , “because this is her mission, and the first she did was tell you all about it.”

Her heart plummets out her body and she wonders how fast she can (a) escape, (b) radio to Jasper, and (c) keep Bellamy from murdering her best friend.

The easy answer –  _not fast enough_  – is pretty fucking obvious.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you do,” he says, sauntering towards her with the carelessness of a man who knows he’s won, “so you’re going to come with me right now, or I’m going to contact your mother and tell her that her favourite protégé is a mole.”

When Clarke only stands there, one hand wrapped around the handle of her knife, the other curled into a fist beside her thigh, still clad in stolen scrubs, Bellamy continues, “Won’t it just be so sweet? Commander Griffin’s two star pupils both turn out to be massive disappointments.”

He doesn’t say traitor. She isn’t a traitor – not in Bellamy’s eyes. Well, not to A.R.K. at least, because that’s not where his loyalties lie.

But the Russia thing — Clarke may not have figured out if she’d forgiven Bellamy, but she  _knew_  he hadn’t forgiven her.

She pushes the knife back up and scowls. “How did you find out?”

“The necklace. Risky move having direct contact with her during one of my ops.”

Clarke nods. “And you haven’t told anyone else?”

He scowls, “There’s still time for that,” and it’s — it’s a threat, plain and simple.

“Right.  _Right_ ,” she stumbles back and finds herself flopping into the guest chair, “so what then? Are you here to murder me?”

The thing is – she knows there are better uses of her mind, that she should be racking through escape plans or emergency backups, gods know she doesn’t have several of those, but all she can focus in on is that he isn’t pulling out any weapons. No knives or guns or even little blue pills made to fake a heart attack, or a stroke, or whatever concoction Abby dreams up next.

He isn’t trying to kill her. It doesn’t make a lot of sense but he  _isn’t_ , she just —

 _Fuck_ , she’s a fucking sap of a person, what a shitty agent, what a shit rogue.

Bellamy pulls her up – yanks on her arm and almost rips it out of its socket, but he’s never been all too gentle – and says, “Listen to me. I’m not here to put you down for Russia.”

 _Finally_  –

“Not yet at least,” he continues, and she frowns, “we’re here to fix your mistake.”

She must look confused because he’s in the midst of forcing her out of the hospital room when he adds on, “We’re getting Octavia. Or I’m ending you – and your little revenge brigade.”

* * *

_scene iii_ : the worst decision. ever.

(“You can’t just expect me to – to  _serve myself up_  on some sort of martyr of a silver platter – “

“It won’t be – “

“It  _will_. It will, because I’ve already used my three strikes and they will literally _shoot on site_  if they so much as know I’m sniffing around.”

“So don’t get caught.”)

* * *

She’d been right – just a general fyi for everyone who doubts her hesitation, she’d been right. And even if she’s about to die, it doesn’t matter so much, because she known all the facts and Bellamy had tried to fly in the face of those, and she’d been right.

Like, they’re both going to be dead in ten minutes or so, but she’d called it.

“Put down the gun – “

“I will  _not_ ,”

“So help me if you don’t put it down  _right this very instant_ I am going to die, and you are going to regret missing the chance –“

“To what, do it myself?”

“To  _finish the mission_ , god, what the fuck is wrong with you.”

Bellamy stares at Clarke. Clarke stares at Bellamy. The world does not rotate on its axis, only within Clarke’ head, and in the five seconds it takes for Bellamy to lower his weapon Anya’s readjusted her grip and has the knife firmly atop Clarke’s jugular.

He pulls his finger off the trigger and Clarke swears at every deity she knows for Oslo, for A.R.K., and for every missed opportunity they’d watched pass by.

Mostly for Oslo though – Anya would not be nearly so pissed off if Clarke hadn’t agreed with Jasper on the whole  _the bigger the boom the better_  slogan.

“Wise choice agent,” she says, and Clarke feels a trickle of liquid seep down her neck – Bellamy’s eyes widen, but he has yet to actually drop his weapon.

Which – good. But also bad. The dull throb on her head is making thoughts more difficult than normal, so Clarke takes three tries before she manages the slip one hand out of the zip-lock ties on her wrist. It isn’t much help – she’s still being held at knife-point, she’s still woozy from being slammed twice into a glass door, but its better.

“What do you want?” Bellamy asks, and Clarke counts back to the steps it took to get here.

Raven was definitely out of the picture – Clarke had talked to Jasper out of sheer necessity, lest he round up their meager back up and send the troops in flying, and reassured them that her disappearing for a few days was free will. Cooperation at its finest. Mutually beneficial. Total bullshit, but the best she could do with circumstances being what they were.

For similar reasons all A.R.K. agents were also out. Bellamy’s renegade mission wasn’t exactly part of their brilliant plan, especially since Abby and Jaha and presumably every other head honcho there had no clue that Bellamy _knew_  about his sister’s less-than-dead status, let alone was charging head-first into a live-keg situation to try and rectify the last five years.

She’d burned all her bridges with Zemla – obviously, hence the current situation – and Octavia was elsewhere in their house/hide-a-way, at Anya’s beck and call. Something about Stockholm syndrome, or maybe even just the big lurking dude that was also by her side, who knew. Anyway – useless.  _Sorry Bellamy_ , she adds in her head,  _but I kind of hate your sister at the moment_.

She gets all of two seconds into that mindset before she renegades,  _sorry Octavia, not your fault_  – and  _fuck_ , Clarke, seriously, you’re about two seconds away from being gutted.

The point is – help is  _not_  on its way, and she’s freaking out, and also she’s missed out on the last several minutes of conversation, and when she finally does tune back in it’s because Anya has dug her knife  _into_  her throat, just enough to force a pained groan from her lips.

“ _Stop_ , just, don’t – “

“What did you think would happen when you used her to get to us?” Anya says, and Clarke blinks away enough fog to notice a figure lurking in the back corner, “Were you too focused on finding you dear baby sister to consider what it would cost this woman?”

There’s something Clarke wants to say – something  _important_ , she just can’t figure out what. She’s losing a lot of blood actually, she thinks, because her body is getting  _really_  fuzzy, and hey, the black spot is getting bigger.

“You  _took_  my sister – you fucking stole her out of an orphanage, brainwashed her – “

“Brainwashed her?” Anya chuckles, “That is a lie told to you by your family.”

Bellamy looks angry, Clarke frowns and tries to say  _it’s not your fault Bellamy_ , or maybe just  _please I think I’m already dying, I take it back – just shoot the bitch_ , but what comes out is a gargled…something. It’s undignified, in any case.

Bellamy glances at her and makes this whining noise, low enough that it pierces through the haze for a moment. “ _Fuck_  – you have nothing to gain by this. Just stop and let us go, you’ll never have to – “

“Let you go?” Anya, well, she cackles, sharp and sporadic enough to jilt the knife off Clarke’s throat. “ _Let you go_. Why would I do that? I’ve been chasing after you agents – “

A loud boom breaks through the fog and Clarke flies backwards, flies sideways into a nearby couch. Or chair. Or something vaguely comfortable and hard at the same time, because there’s shop furniture in the house and she didn’t pick it out, Zemla agents did, she isn’t supposed to be here and be dying she’s supposed to…she’s supposed to be doing  _something_.

It’s  _important_.

It becomes less important in each heartbeat that trudges by, and Clarke counts the facts.

One. Two.  _One_  –

Clarke tries to count the facts, tries to count back, but all she can think is  _I knew that this was going to end this way_ , and she can’t even muster up the energy to feel vindicated.

There’s  _noise_  above her, it ruins the peaceful vibe of relief and – damn, she should at least check it out –

When she finally comes to it’s to a vision of black curtains and angry circles and she tries so hard to ignore the pain coming from every body part north of her torso. She’s an assassin. She’s an assassin.

She’s a rogue agent. She’s a  _survivor_.

 _Breathe Clarke_.

She coughs.

And coughs, and coughs, and continues to hack up a lung but it clears her vision up somewhat and the vague black and red sharpens and becomes Octavia –  _Octavia_ , what, she’s helping Clarke sit up and propping her on the couch-chair-thing and –

“C’mon,” Octavia is saying, “c’mon you asshole just  _breath_ , you can do it,”

Clarke gasps. “What – ” her throat feels like sandpaper and she needs to try a few times to force out the rest, “what just happened?”

Octavia is grinning, even though her shirts covered in blood. Surely that isn’t all Clarke’s. “She left me with a gun – bitch had it coming.”

* * *

_scene iv:_ same scene; ruined house in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere in Eastern Europe —  _why_  is it always Eastern Europe; three individuals: two dark haired, vaguely similar looking, and staring at each other in utter silence; one light haired and covered in blood, holding a rag up to her neck and trying desperately not to put  _all_  of her weight on the broken counter top.

(one: injured body, lying prone on the floor, left chest cavity pumping out blood at a steady rate; just an addendum)

* * *

She feels better now that she’s standing up, and the Blake siblings aren’t saying anything – let alone explaining how this complete 180 came about where Octavia suddenly decides that Zemla = bad and Bellamy = good, but she can’t get the helpless feeling out of her gut so she reaches for the nearest walkie and sets about getting a radio frequency to Jasper.

Octavia’s hands are covered in blood, Clarke’s and Anya’s both, and she stands a careful distance away from her brother.

Bellamy has dropped his rifle and is standing a careful distance from his sister, eyes wide and mouth open and looking like his general wonderless self.

They’re both idiots.

Clarke’s never had a sibling, but the closest she’s come to is Jasper and Raven, so it’s predominantly stark-relief that has her all but collapsing (further) onto the countertop when the radio clicks in.

 _“Clarke? Is that you? Where have you been?_ ”

“It’s me,” she whispers, eyes on the deer-in-headlights siblings, “how’s it going?”

 _“Fine – well, actually, not entirely, it’s_ more _than fine. Did you know that Monty left A.R.K.?”_

Octavia takes a tentative step forward. Then stops.

Clarke shakes her head, then realizes Jasper can’t see it, then shakes it again anyway, “No, how do you know that?”

 _“Because he’s_ here _. He’s at the house.”_

“Wait,  _our_  house?”

_“Yeah. I – I don’t know the full story yet but I thought you’d want to know.”_

Clarke nods. Again. Shit, seriously, she’s got to get it together. “That’s great,” she murmurs, “really…that’s fantastic, set him up and maybe, uhm…just if you could – Jasper,”

 _“Clarke,_ ” he sounds worried,  _“wait, you never answered me – what’s been going on?_ ”

She doesn’t want to mention names, in case she distracts from the reunion that’s bound that be happening sooner or later, when either gets their heads out of their asses, so she just says, “I’ll explain it all later. I’m in Kursk, and I’d uhm…I’d really like to not be.”

 _“Kursk – okay,”_ bless his little productive soul, she’s so buying him a new pair of goggles, “ _plane, boat, cross-country train ride, what do you need?”_

“Plane,” she gasps – fuck, someone better have a first aid kit in this place, “please.”

 _“There will be one there within the hour. I’ll text you the details – you_ do _still have your phone on you?_ ”

“On airplane mode, but yeah, somewhere. See you soon.”

_“We’re all here waiting for you.”_

She clicks off the line without anything else. She’s still woozy and light-headed and can barely see straight, but it’s a start. She’ll get cleaned up and she’ll get the fuck out and it’s a start.

She’s still watching the scene unfold before her – over Anya’s slowly fading body, it’d morbid but very…honest, somehow – and she sees the moment Bellamy starts forward, finally coming out of his stupor.

“O – “ he says, takes another step, “ _Octavia,_ ”

“Bell,” she gasps, and it isn’t quite the enamoured sibling-esque plea that Clarke had hoped for, she isn’t sure she’d been hoping for anything but maybe an ambulance, or some of Monty’s old regime brew, but it’s a hell of a lot better than the running and screaming and shouting that had occurred the last time.

Besides – situation  _fucked up family_  was Clarke’s speciality, not the Blake’s.

As if to prove this thought Bellamy goes to reach for Octavia, like a habit, only he stops mid-motion – maybe he’s remembering Russia, or even Oslo, where Clarke herself had the honour of punching him in the face the last time he tried to touch her – but she doesn’t have time to consider it before Octavia lets out some sort of pained noise and suddenly she has her arms wrapped tight around Bellamy, tearing him apart and putting him back together in one emotional sweep.

She knows this because she knows Bellamy, knows that wide eyes and trembling lips is a look of pure vulnerability that Agent Blake would never allow.

“Oh  _Bellamy_ ,” Octavia’s crying, “you  _stupid shit_ , after the way I treated you – “

“Shut up, just  _shut up_ , it was  _not_  your fault,” he murmurs, arms coming up to wrap around her waist, “I’m sorry I didn’t come sooner.”

"I don’t — we’ll have to," Octavia buries her face in the crook of her brother’s neck and so Clarke can’t make out what she says next, but Bellamy smiles and —

She knows. She knows that this is what she wanted. That the whole reason she fought so hard was to help these two reunite, and yet…

She can’t watch them.

What she  _needs_  is a fucking first aid kit and a  _car_  – she’s going to have to hitch a ride, or steal the one Anya had brought in, if it hadn’t been destroyed in the initial blaze. She needs to get going, like  _now_ , she needs to get herself out of everything that is currently happening – which is a lot of really gross sobbing, actually, she doesn’t need to see any of it. Needs. She can focus on those.

Bellamy needs…needs  _this._ He has his sister. His no-longer-brainwashed sister, which, side note, still weird. They’re going to go underground and be a real family, they’re going to have to detoxify their shared history that’s been built on lies and half-stories, and she’s never going to see either –

 _Stop_. She looks away.  _Breath_ e.

Clarke doesn’t bother saying goodbye – she’s actually never been any good with them, and it’s just easier to accept the cowardice for what it is and move on. Anything else would be just, well, it’d be painful, and honestly today’s been hard enough. She deserves to leave.

Besides, Jasper’s got Monty over now, and Raven’s in need of some comfort and probably a bed. And probably clothing, and every other aspect of her life that they’d blown up — she actually needs to still  _tell_  Raven to get the fuck out of Dodge, right. There are things to do, and it doesn’t matter that Bellamy is going to whisk his sister away to their safer, better life and she’s never going to see him again.

It doesn’t.


	4. Chapter 4

 

 **act iv;** there's blood and guts and honestly, not a lot of glory

 

* * *

_scene i_ : there's a pain in her side that she's used two incongruous pills to ignore, a pain in her head that she's coexisting with, and a pain somewhere in her chest that may or may not be made up; all in all it is another fucking Tuesday.

* * *

 

It takes three planes and one very suspect cab ride before Clarke manages to jack someone’s motorcycle and make it back to her place.

Here’s the thing about Clarke’s place: it’s a fucking mess. Like, not the cute kind, not the  _whoops did I leave my socks on the floor again_ kind, no – it’s blood stains in the corner and deep wounds on the walls and a lot of ammunition casings. She’d briefly considered laying low, back when she’d first ran, had thought about trying out the typical undercover agent thing. But it has never been her style to be subtle, as fucking ironic as that is. She’s accepted that she isn’t going to get her deposit back and instead has turned to paying out anyone that cares to question her.

It’s a good system. She likes the system. When she opens her front door, sides still keening from explosions and bullets and high altitude, her system has gone to  _shit_.

She manages to take in the shiny floors and bare kitchen counters before throwing her gaze upwards and deciding that now is really not the time to have a panic attack over her apartment being clean.

“Hello?” She calls, edging her way in, her door clicking locked automatically behind her. She doesn’t have a gun – customs, the assholes, and if the extraction had been in the least bit planned she never would have let the thing go – but she’s managed to keep her plastic-blend knife strapped to her back. She brandishes it now, legs flexing, just in case –

“Clarke!”

She snaps and suddenly the knife is in the wall and Monty is staring back at her with an uneasy grin. She blinks at him, blinks at the knife, and leans heavily into the kitchen counter.

“ _Green_?” She gasps, and then he’s in her arms and it hurts, of course it fucking hurts, but it’s a good hurt for once (well, not the wound-hurt thing – that’s the regular kind of pain, unfortunately).

“Oh good you’re back – we weren’t sure when you’d make it,” he’s shaking a little, arms around her waist, which is good because she’s a little too weak to grip back, “Jasper was in the middle of explaining your set up when your call came in and then we were busy organizing routes; he said you would never do a bus, but desperate times right? Although I guess taxis aren’t so bad – I drove one here, actually, had to drive some business man downtown, which was weird but – “

“Monty  _breath_ ,” Clarke says, eyeing the knife embedded in the wall. It soothes her a little. “It’s great to see you.”

She means it, and she pulls back enough that he can see that. He’s grinning, still the same bumbling, babbling mess he’d been since he’d joined the group six years ago, and it warms her to be able to take him in.

Of course that’s just when another voice chimes,

“You’ve found her!” and Jasper sidles up to Monty even as he’s clasping a hand across Clarke’s shoulder. She glares. “It’s good to see you chief. You had us worried for a sec.”

“Is Raven – “

“Present,” Clarke is having  _enough_  of being snuck up on, but she whirls appropriately and finds Raven standing gamely – and safely – off to the side, “and a little pissed off.”

Clarke can’t help herself, although she tries, she really does. But the door is closed and she’s safe and they’re safe, and well…okay, she kind of  _collapses_  back onto the counter, elbows hitting linoleum with a hard  _thud_.

Her apartment may be clean and she may have burnt most of her bridges, but no one’s dead and that’s a win in her books right now.

“Now,” Raven says, sparing no time for pleasantries (that’s her girl), “tell us exactly what the fuck happened. And no bullshit.”

Clarke scrubs a hand over her face and agrees. “No bullshit.”

She starts right in, she can’t do anything  _but_ , and gets as far as the scene with Anya before anyone bothers to move the conversation to some place other than the front kitchen, which means that her feet feel more or less dead to her. Clarke sinks back into the couch with a pleased sigh and launches into Octavia’s explosions saving the day – much to Jasper’s delight – while Raven curls up next to her and tucks a throw blanket around her legs.

Raven is…well, a lot of things. She’s Clarke’s undercover – well, former – spy and she’s an agent, not born but bred. She’s the wife of Clarke’s cover boyfriend, and widowed by Clarke’s own hands. She’s been put through a lot of pain at Clarke’s hands, actually, and yet somehow they’re still wrapped around each other, Raven’s fingers running soothing lines up and down Clarke’s arm as Clarke distantly recounts running from Zemla’s safety office, Raven coming to Clarke’s aid despite the travesty that lies behind them.

It’s insurmountable and the only thing keep Clarke tethered at the moment.

She makes it to the point of grabbing some biker’s ride – he was an ass, Clarke tries to only steal from bonafide  _dickwads_ , thank you very much – before ending with,

“I’m enemy number one as far as Zemla’s concerned, but Bellamy got what he wanted, and I,” she bites her lip and looks up, eyes finding Jasper and Monty stuffed next to each other on one half of a loveseat, feels unbearably fond, “I got you guys.”

Jasper grins, quick and bright, and beside him Monty nods enthusiastically. Raven is sighing disapprovingly next to her, probably because Clarke’s encouraging them, but it’s still comforting and –

“Wait,” Clarke sits a little straighter, “ _why_  do I have you guys?”

“Wow, that was a quick turn,” Jasper quips, but Monty’s face has gone ashen.

And Monty, well – he hadn’t  _refused_  last time, to come with Jasper and Clarke, there just hadn’t been time to get him on board before Clarke had to fake her death and then steal Jasper a few months later. But he was always one of hers, not Abby’s of Kane’s,  _hers_ , and she had only left him at A.R.K. because it was safest. Extraction had always been the plan, so she isn’t too terribly surprised to see him here, although they hadn’t planned to make contact yet.

But Raven…Raven is her mole. And yeah, okay, Bellamy had fucked that twelve ways to Sunday, but Clarke had never gotten the chance to  _tell_  anyone that.

As she thinks this she shifts in her seat, and Raven turns to face her. Raven’s lips are stretched white and there’s a furrow in her brows that’s sudden and absolutely no good.

Monty starts, “I forgot, you were going on about all these near-death things and I – “

“Jaha’s dead Clarke,” Raven cuts him off, “Bellamy shot him when it looked like he wouldn’t let him leave for his sister.”

Clarke can barely breathe. Clarke can barely  _breathe_ , oh shit,  _shit, shitshitshit_  –

“And that means, if Jaha is…”

Raven nods and her lips tilt down.

“Your –,” Raven straightens, “Abby is in charge. She’s running the whole god damn show now.”

 

* * *

 

_scene ii_ :  cue to Clarke running circles around her (far too cramped) apartment, attempting to wrangle Jasper into packing up whatever tech equipment he can manage; Raven deals with guns and Clarke deals with…well, shock mostly, but also some emergency documents she’s had made up for all of them.

(“Even me?” Monty says, bewildered, boggling both at her and the passport in his hand.

Clarke huffs, “Well, duh,” she deliberately doesn’t meet his gaze, “you were always coming back at some point.”)

* * *

 

“No, no, grab the Uzi, we don’t have ammo for the other one,”

“No  _ammo_ , seriously – ”

“ _Raven_ ,”

“Right.” A pause, “I’m just saying, in the future – ”

“Raven!”

Monty leads with, “Wait, what about toothbrushes?” and really, if that isn’t a statement of how well things are going, Clarke’s out of ideas.

This begins a side conversation that goes to the end of, “well, why the fuck are packing  _that_  then?” and Clarke is just  _fucked_ , like, it is insane how fucked she is, the edge of tired and exhausted and nearly freaking out, she does not freak out but she’s in the middle of some sort of buzzing panic that’s barely shoved to the side and –

(About ten minutes earlier Jasper had asked, “Wait, why is your mother in charge  _such_  a bad thing? Like, she can be shitty, but no worse than before. ”

“Look,” Clarke isn’t impatient so much as she is reeling from both blood loss, a shitty and far too temporary medical procedure in the bathroom of an Arby’s, and the idea of her mother wielding the full power of the A.R.K., “Bellamy sneaking out to find me is one thing, Bellamy shooting Theolonius Wells  _point_   _blank_  and escaping is another. My mother,” Clarke is torn between scowling and gasping, between being so intolerably  _angry_  and trying not to die, “ _Abby_ , she isn’t going to take that lightly. She’s going to follow the trail and figure out who exactly Bellamy was so intent on getting to.”

And although the answer was ultimately Octavia, that wasn’t who he had been hunting down.

“Oh shit,” Jasper says, even as Raven begins to pack her shit up again.)

Clarke eyes the bedroom warily – usually it’s just her and Jasper hiding out here, and Clarke doesn’t so much as sleep in the room as use it to avoid Jasper and his extensive liquor collection, she doesn’t do enclosed spaces with people for prolonged periods of time  _well_ , okay – and considers the pros and cons of just trashing the place.

Like, pro: burning things down means there would be nothing for Abby to find; no documents, no pictures, no semblance of sentimentality, for or against her. For or against her friends.

Con: okay there are a lot of other tenants here. Ms. Martine, down the hall, gave her two Tupperware cases of brownies last month and Clarke hasn’t even returned the favour yet. Or, for that matter, finished the brownies.

But in the grand scheme of things, Clarke’s already got a fuck ton of shit on her records, and what’s a little bit more blood to wipe out –

Jasper shoots her a look then, one she only notices because it is accompanied by a, “Clarke, no.”

 _Clarke yes_ , she thinks mutinously, but finds herself nodding and turning to instead help Raven shove the last of their gear into two indistinguishable black bags and one bright, neon-pink backpack.

It is at this precise moment, one hand on the monstrosity that must be Jasper’s doing, the other on a round of munitions, that she spots them. The motion triggers her attention, and then the black, blurry shapes that are quickly approaching her window kick starts her into action.

“Shit,” she swears, jolting up just as the first agent careens through the glass.

Apparently her front door lock works just fine. Also just as apparent is that A.R.K. has invested in some kickass grappling equipment.

The second body flies through her window just as Raven screams, “Now!” and tosses Clarke the Uzi.

It’s fucking hopeless but she catches it and loads it and fucking lets it  _rip_. She feels the kick, watches as one body reaches the window just to fall back out.

She’s been in the business long enough now that her body processes what’s happening long before her mind catches up. Her blood is beating sluggishly against her temples, which is what she blames when it takes her three more rounds before finishing the odds and realizing there is literally  _no_  way this can end well.

(Okay, Abby could just miraculously  _stop_ , or finish this bait and switch game, this fucked up control shit, but that’s even less likely and Clarke only spares the thought the time it takes to disarm the agent closest to her, and then she’s throwing herself back into the fray.)

Distantly she’s aware that Raven’s throwing punches next to her, that Monty is in the process of grabbing what Jasper can’t, because Jasper is firing his pet rifle at anyone who gets too close – Clarke  _has_ been born and bred into this, she can keep track of things easy – but mostly she’s looking for familiar brown hair, for a tightly coiled braid and fiercely downturned lips. The fighting style is definitely A.R.K., so she knows Zemla hasn’t caught up to her yet, but the attack hadn’t come until she’d been at home for at least an hour, so clearly this isn’t your run-of-the-mill attack on the traitors.

She hears her name being called from behind her, a roar of, “ _Clarke_ ,” and she spins, expects the rush of recognition –

Doesn’t expect it to be – the  _fuck_ ,

“Octavia?!”

The front door –  _her_  front door – is swung open, reinforced steel utterly useless in the face of whoever picked the fucking lock.  _Her_  fucking lock, her beautiful, unbreakable –

“ _Clarke_ ,” Octavia repeats, snarling in a manner startling familiar, and when did Bellamy’s little sister start yelling her name with such familiarity? For that matter, when did Bellamy’s little sister start  _breaking into her fucking house_?

Clarke acknowledges the possibility that it’s because this isn’t the first time she’s tried to get her attention, not by the force Raven uses to wrench her arm and shove her towards the door, a muttered, “fucking  _c’mon_  Griffin,” through clenched teeth and continued gunfire.

Octavia catches her, which is when Clarke notices the large scrape across the girl’s forehead, dousing the left side in blood – a superficial wound, but a messy one. Reminds her of the beating of blood against her stomach, a painful fucking reminder with one of the Blakes literally  _in her face_.

“Come  _on_ ,” Octavia shouts, and rather than going out in a blaze of gunfire, they’re pouring out Clarke’s front door.

She cranes her neck behind her, just enough to see Jasper slamming through the door right behind Monty, and then she catches sight of the last person she ever thought she’d see again.

Bellamy stands over a crowd of unconscious – or dead, either is fair – A.R.K. agents, blood on his face, bruises already on pretty much everything, and he grins, a mouth of red,

“Long time no see,” he says, which is the exact moment Clarke passes out.

 

* * *

_scene iii_ : Clarke Griffin does not faint. Clarke Griffin  _does not_  faint. Clarke Griffin, under no circumstances, faints.

Clarke Griffin fucking does not faint.

* * *

 

“You just – ”

She gasps, “Shut,” a hitched, painful breath, “ _up_.”

“Seriously, give me the pack.”

Normally she’d punch him. She would, totally. But the stitch in her side is the size of fucking  _China_ , and she can’t mutter that type of finesse. Instead, she glares, and uses her remaining energy to bite down on the tongue she wants to stick out.

They bolt through another dense part of the forest, dense enough that Bellamy shuts up and stops pestering her, too intent on following his sister safely through. Octavia is leading them…somewhere. Clarke’s honestly not too sure, but that’s only because the plan was already decided on by the time Clarke woke up in the taxi cab that Monty had apparently stolen. Or owned.

Those details were also kind of fuzzy.

She trains her eyes on the pink backpack Raven’s carrying and thinks of nothing else but one foot in front of the other, of not tripping over roots and vegetation, of the sounds of the forest, only their laboured breath at the moment. But, like she said, she wasn’t awake for the car chase. She doesn’t remember how good their chances were at outrunning the A.R.K. agents.

She’s not sure she trusts any of this, only that she has no other options.

It’s another few miles, and one pit stop where Clarke had desperately needed to empty the contents of her stomach, before they reach it.  _It_  comes out of nowhere, isn’t accessible by any road as far as Clarke can tell, and is somehow  _massive_.

All of these details slide away the minute Octavia pulls her necklace free from its spot nestled under her shirt, revealing a key-shaped pendant. Revealing a  _key_ , Clarke realizes, and they tumble through the front door of the god damn  _mansion_ with absolutely none of the grace they’re all meant to have.

Raven is at her side in an instant – might have been there the whole time, actually.

“Come on,” she’s saying, although her lips are moving slower than the sound is.

Ah, Clarke nods, she’s in shock.

She stumbles a little, and Raven and Bellamy both reach her as her knees give out. Clarke doesn’t pick up on what look they share, although they do share one, but she’s too busy chanting  _Clarke Griffin does not faint, Clarke Griffin does not faint_  in her head to really care.

“’m oka’,” she slurs, and tries to gesture to her stomach, “jus’ a flesh wound.”

Bellamy’s grip tightens and Clarke can’t bite back the moan – his hand is on her shoulder, right next to the wound on her neck.

He loosens his hold immediately but doesn’t let go, “That’s not a flesh wound,” he says, and his voice sounds careful.

Clarke isn’t paying attention. “ – lock th’door?” she says, or at least think she says.

From somewhere above – oh fuck, is Clarke on the fucking floor  _again_  – Octavia says, “Locked and boarded. This is a safe house.”

Clarke makes an inquisitive noise, tries to at least.

“It was a…gift,” Ocatvia says, in that same measured tone that Bellamy was, “but Zemla doesn’t know about it. And it’s off the grid.”

Jasper squawks, “Just  _how_  off the grid are we talking – ” but Raven is closer to Clarke’s ear and is saying something to her.

Clarke blinks and Raven shakes her head, probably repeats herself,

“Would you please fucking  _lie down_  so we can look at your flesh wound?”

She sounds grumpy. Clarke frowns, “Don’ need to be so grumpy ‘bout it.”

Raven matches her frown and just pushes Clarke all the way to the floor. Clarke is pretty sure she deserved that, but is distracted by how much it fucking  _hurts_ , jesus fucking christ.

A few moments float by where Clarke can’t catch them, where all she can think is  _I guess that Arby’s didn’t have as good of lighting as I thought_ , because surely she did a better job of patching herself up than whatever Raven’s horrified gasp would lead her to think.

“Flesh fucking wound my ass,”

“Told you,” Bellamy’s replying, holding Clarke’s shoulders down. She doesn’t remember needing the help, but there’s pain swarming her eyes and her muscles ache, so maybe she’s missed something again.

“What happened?” Raven snaps, and then Octavia is crowding around her with some sort of white stuff. Gauze, probably. Maybe chloroform-soaked cloth, anything to put Clarke out of her misery.

“Don’ wannit,” she mutters, because chloroform actually gives her the  _worst_  headaches, but she’s ignored.

Bellamy runs his hand down her arm, back up again, soothing, and uses the other to keep her pinned. Clarke’s probably bleeding out all over Octavia’s foyer. That’s a shitty thing to do, as a guest, and she’s really sorry about it.

Octavia looks up at her and grins, quick and bright. Whoops. Clarke might’ve said that out loud.

“– not a gunshot,” Bellamy is saying, “but, there was this thing – ”

“’shplosion,” Clarke slurs.

Octavia presses something to Clarke’s stomach, “Yeah, sorry about that. I thought it was a gun.”

Bellamy says, “Well actually it  _was_ ,” but this is where something cold and liquid and  _burning_  is poured over her injury – okay, yeah, it was a pretty deep wound, Octavia’s doctored up weapon had actually hit Clarke, not that she hadn’t tried to deal with that after the fact – and Clarke’s vision blurs white.

This time, when she comes back, she can actually focus on people’s faces, which has to be a good sign.

Bellamy is the first to notice her awake, or at least to notice her blinking blearily at the shit ton of wooden panelling that’s surrounding her, and from the glare he sends her way, eyes tight but mouth firm and scowled, she suspects she’s not supposed to sit up.

She sits up.

Or she attempts to at least – Monty is at her side in an instant to help. It’s funny to watch him try and give equal attention to her and Bellamy both, unsure where the biggest threat lies, but then it just becomes painful. Actually, everything is painful – Clarke feels beaten and raw, turned inside out and scrubbed down to the bones – she’s in no position to be any sort of threat. A pest, maybe, but not a threat.

“I did  _not_  faint,” are the first words to tumble out of her mouth, and if she wasn’t so exhausted she probably would blush.

Monty props her up – she’s on a couch, a weird flip from her position a few hours earlier. Or at least, she hopes it was only hours.

“Sure thing boss,” he says, and Bellamy – wisely – doesn’t comment.

Raven walks into the room then – they’re in some sort of living area, Clarke notes, couches and wing chairs and recliners filling the space – Octavia at her side. They’re both deep in conversation, Octavia in the middle of wiping blood of her hands. Probably Clarke’s blood.

Clarke is still sorry about that. She keeps this to herself this time.

Monty has turned to sit next to her on the couch so she takes the chance to ask,

“Jasper?”

“He’s trying to figure out how to set his stuff up without using a local address,” Monty replies, and then proceeds to say a bunch of things Clarke tunes out. Instead she presses a hand to the padding just under her ribcage, and swears.

“Well,” she says, when it is clear that she now has  _everyone’s_  attention, “that could have gone better.”

Raven, who is her favorite, is the first to laugh. And then promptly says, “If you ever pull shit like that again I will personally  _gut_  you.”

Bellamy flops into the vacant space on her other side, and Clarke’s too tired, in too many ways, to stop herself from pressing into him just a little. She’s valiantly decided to temporarily forget all the reasons she’s pissed at him.

“Right,” he says, “I thought we agreed on that after Glasgow.”

Clarke presses her lips together and tries to dig an elbow into his stomach. It’s unsuccessful, but ends with her half on Bellamy’s shoulder, half in Monty’s lap. It’s…okay, fine, it’s fine, she’s not moving.

“Shut  _up_ ,” she says, “and explain what the fuck just happened.”

Octavia comes over to them and kneels in front of Clarke. She presses one hand firmly to Clarke’s stomach, and the other to her shoulder, which isn’t hard given that at Clarke’s currently angle she’s more sideways than upright.

“We had a moment,” Octavia is saying, not looking at Clarke, “and when we turned around you were gone.”

Bellamy has an arm around Clarke’s waist and is using it to help his sister inspect…whatever is going on down there. Clarke thinks they stitched her up. “I was going to tell you,” he stops, restarts, “I wouldn’t have – if I had known you’d go the moment I turned around, shrapnel in your chest be damned, I would have told you earlier.”

“About the Jaha thing?” She asks, because that’s fucking  _monumental_  the jackass.

“About lots.” He says, and shrugs, and since Clarke isn’t facing him she has to go on Octavia’s shit-eating grin to guess what expression he’s making.

She’s skipping over that. She is  _so_  skipping over all of that.

“A lot of good it would’ve done if they’d tracked you back to my team before you and me had finished nearly dying.” Clarke simpers.

Octavia stands up, apparently happy with whatever the state of Clarke’s body is, and Bellamy and Month both shift until Clarke is a little more vertical and a little more smushed.

“I didn’t  _know_  you had a fucking team,” this is punctuated by a look, a glare, really, in Monty’s direction. Monty, to his credit, barely flinches.

“You were being all,” Monty gestures in Bellamy’s general direction, “ _you_. What was I supposed to do?”

“Me? What the fuck does that mean?”

“It  _means_ ,” Raven snaps, although it’s without its regular heat, and when Clarke looks up Raven is lounging in one of the large sofa chairs, looking like a god damn cat, “that you are a big fucking steam pile of  _shit_  when you’re obsessed and angry. You would’ve taken Monty down without a second thought.”

Bellamy doesn’t disagree with this. He does, however, stop sending daggers in Monty’s direction.

Octavia leans against the side of Raven’s chair. “Bellamy was going to put me here and then come for you, but Bellamy’s a bit of an idiot. That, at least, I remember.”

Clarke isn’t sure if she should laugh. She  _is_  sure that it’ll hurt if she does, so she nods, “Yeah, that’s definitely true.”

“Hey.”

“What,” she says, unapologetic, craning a bit to see his face, “don’t even try to deny how dumb this whole thing has been.”

His gaze is soft when he looks down at her, and Clarke is –  _nope_ , nope, she is  _not_  dealing with this right now.

Octavia is grinning when Clarke turns back, cutting off anything Bellamy might try to say by pointedly avoiding eye contact. She doesn’t move, still.

“Alright then,” she says, and fights not to closer her eyes, “what’s our next move?”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is it!! the big finale!! wow i can't believe we made it here.
> 
> as always, if you want to, my tumblr is msbricolage.tumblr.com
> 
> (oh man i have no clue how link friend ao3 is.)

**act v:** or how the bloodshed is tied up, neither neat nor tidy – but tied.

 

* * *

_scene i:_ “Would you?”

Clarke breaks from the target for a moment, considering – it isn’t a new question for her.

“Yes,” she says, careful but confident, “if that’s what it came to.”

Octavia looks like she wants to say something else – maybe how family is important and rare and shit like that, or maybe just that Clarke is a cold-hearted bitch, who knows – but the man in her arms starts to struggle again and that pulls her attention away. Clarke does _not_ sigh in relief, but it’s a near thing.

Look – blood isn’t everything; unless you’re spilling it together with your team.

* * *

 

 Once they’ve gone out and gotten supplies – and fended off their tails no less than three times – it becomes a matter of planning.

“We’re going to have to think big.”

“I resent that implication,” Clarke snips, only to find her greeted with twin smirks from Raven and Bellamy both. She frowns.

“Actually,” she continues, “I resent ever pairing the two of you together. What were they teaching you in A.R.K.?”

Raven tosses her bangs out of her face, glancing back down at the crudely drawn map, “Just because you were in a snit with the good overseer here didn’t mean I had to be.”

Clarke points a finger at Bellamy’s responding grin, slowly growing bigger, “Hush you. And I would _think_ ,” she pokes Raven in the cheek, “that being on myside meant you take _my_ _side_.”

“ _Sides_ ,” Raven air-quotes, still not looking up, “what the fuck is this, grade school?”

None of them mention that out of their group of six only one ever made it to middle school, officially, and it’s definitely not Clarke.

“Right, whatever.” Clarke simpers, “Traitors.”

Bellamy laughs. “Baby.”

“Deceitful _bastard_.”

“Oh, you wanna toss the deceit card around? Really?”

“Yeah, we’re going to – ”

“Oh my god, _children_ ,” Raven interrupts, slapping a hand on the table, “focus.”

Bellamy does so, after one last simpering smile in Clarke’s direction. Clarke, to her total shame, takes a few beats longer.

(Hey now, she’s a few weeks out from a near-death injury – she’s can at least blame the drugs.)

Octavia, who’s been lounging on the couch next to Jasper and Monty, smushed tightly next to each other in order to accommodate her long legs, chimes in,

“How the fuck did you two ever manage to get your shit together long enough to track me down? This is possibly _the_ most inefficient task force I’ve seen to date, and I was held by a Russian mob group for years.” She makes a face, “Those guys were professionals in liquidating time. Like, with tequila.”

“Tequila?” Monty’s gaping at her a little.

She nods sagely, “Te _quila_.”

Octavia does shit like that fairly often – throws a cavalier sentence out about her Stockholm Syndrome-like escapades with Zemla, like if she’s indifferent to it for long enough it’ll stop mattering. Like Clarke hadn’t spent the better part of her last few years tracking down the fuck-up track record of her whereabouts. Like Clarke hadn’t destroyed her ability to function in most of Eastern Europe just because two groups had gotten together and decided that it was okay to white out Octavia’s entire history and rewrite it to suit their whims.

It’s kinda admirable, to be honest.

Clarke turns, settling a hip on the table – they’d dragged it in from the kitchen, the entire house threadbare from not having any residents since, well, ever, possibly.

“Oh that’s easy,” she says, “your brother practically put a hit on my life. Proper motivation makes me a more, ah – efficient agent, let’s say.”

Silence. And then, “Come on now, that’s hardly fair. I threatened your life plenty of times before and you never reacted like that.”

“No, you threatened _to threaten_ my life, you never followed through.”

“Semantics,” Bellamy argues.

Clarke bristles, but Raven – who has clearly been in A.R.K. for too long, Clarke’s fault really, to allow Raven to assume so many bad habits from the place; for example, crazy professional work ethic – cuts her off again.

“So I’m thinking,” she says pointedly, “we have two options.”

Clarke glances back and Raven has her hands laid out over the big sheet of paper, a shoddy reconstruction of the A.R.K. compound.

“Broadly at least,” she continues, now looking to the group at large. Probably because she actually has their attention – it’s been a long couple of weeks.

Monty nods, but Clarke’s confident that’s just because he doesn’t want to be called on. Jasper sighs and says,

“And?”

Raven glowers.

“ _And_ ,” she says, now to Clarke, “we can either cut our losses and run. Like, really run – Abby is fucking terrifying with a bit between her teeth, we all know that.”

It’s a testament to their relationship that no one thinks this will bother Clarke. It doesn’t.

“We would have to all scatter.” Bellamy points out.

Raven nods. “Definitely. And scatter _far_. I know that you two,” a nod to Clarke and Jasper both, “haven’t been to headquarters in a while – ”

“Well _actually_ – ” Jasper starts, but Clarke waves off the end of his sentence.

“ – but the tech they’ve got now is absurdly good quality. And Jaha’s been taking dirtier missions, ever since Wells…”

Raven stops here. Clarke takes a moment to handle the brief surge of gratitude for that, and then pushes on,

“Yes, I knew that,” she admits, turning to the crowded couch, “which is why running isn’t going to work. Not for me at least.”

Octavia shrugs, unconcerned, eyes locked on Bellamy. Wild cards, the both of them. It makes Clarke extremely uncomfortable, but she’s not about to let them know.

“What’s option two then?” Jasper asks.

Raven fiddles with the map again. “We attack.”

There’s a large pool of silence that follows. Clarke counts the seconds – her and Raven have already gone over most of this, it’s been two weeks of back and forth and not-so-subtle hedging of the topic while Clarke heals up.

She gets to forty-seven before Monty says, “That’s it?”

Raven shrugs. “Yup. At least until we know who’s on board.”

Bellamy circles back to the couch, his eyes not quite on Octavia, but not on anyone else either. They’re a smart group. They know how to read subtext.

He settles on the arm beside her and says, “I don’t want to do anything risky.”

Clarke continues to do what she has this whole week. Which is a load of _shit_ , honestly, and is comprised entirely of saying nothing about the risks of a rescue, or of putting them up in the first place. Clarke’s impulse control is not finely tuned but – well, this is her working on it.

“That’s fair,” she says at length, because it is.

“Shut the fuck up, it’s not happening.” Octavia says over top of her, frowning at Clarke and Bellamy both.

“Octavia – ” Clarke starts.

“ _No_ , you don’t get to treat me like I’m some sort of…I don’t fucking know, fragile little girl who can’t deal with this.” Octavia fumes, gripping the cushion seat with furious white knuckles, “I’m the only one who can judge whether or not I’m able to do this, and I _can_. Seriously, I grew up with the Russian counterpart to your mom’s gang – I can handle fieldwork.”

Raven settles a hand on Clarke’s shoulder. She breathes in. “I’m not saying you can’t handle yourself – I went out with you, I know you can handle yourself. But what we’re – what I’m talking about, it isn’t…it won’t be a normal mission. It’ll be worse.”

“I know.”

“It’s understandable that you two would want to recoup – you’ve been through a lot.”

Octavia sneers, “That is such a fucking dumb phrase. We’ve all been through shit.”

Clarke blinks. On the couch Monty and Jasper both turn to stare at Octavia, similar expressions on their face.

“What,” Octavia says defensively, “it’s been a long few weeks. You guys talk a lot.”

If it wasn’t a security issue, Clarke honestly wouldn’t push it. They all understand the desire to leave things lying – in this business, sleeping demons are best left unprovoked.

But. This is Abby they’re talking about. This is – it’s big. And destructive. There’s the constant, and valid, concern that the entire mess will swallow them whole.

So she pushes, “I know this isn’t your fight – ”

“You don’t get it Clarke,” Octavia interjects, abruptly weary, “it _is_. A.R.K. lied to my brother, they left me with a group that’s – Zemla isn’t any worse, they were nice enough, but _everyone_ lied. They ruined my life.” She glances over to Bellamy, who is worryingly silent, “They ruined _our_ lives.”

Bellamy doesn’t move, but then Octavia lays a hand astride his knee and he blinks a few times, face flushed.

“Yeah,” he agrees, grabbing Octavia’s hand, “Okay. We’re in.”

And Clarke leaves it lying.

“Us too,” Jasper volunteers. “Me and Monty. Let’s take these fuckers down.”

Raven still has a hand on Clarke’s shoulder, uses it to grip her tightly. When she speaks Clarke can hear the grin in her voice.

“You know I’m in.”

Clarke glances back and smiles. “Right. Alright, yeah.”

“Yeah?”

“ _Yes_.” She says, with more conviction, “And I know what we’re going to do.”

Monty stares, just a little. “You – we were _just_ , I mean how do you – ”

Clarke cuts in, straightening a little – this is something she’s been ruminating on from the start, since she’d first been faced with the ugly, bare truth of it all,

“We do the only thing we _can_ do,”

Bellamy makes a face, “Cut the posturing Griffin.”

“Hey, I am allowed a moment to reflect on the _seriousness_ – ”

“You are _so_ dramatic,”

“This isn’t me being dramatic, you’ve just gotten too old to recognize bright new ideas even when they bite you right in the – ”

“Guys,” Octavia pipes up, side eyeing Raven, whose face is scrunched up in a similar expression of strained amusement, “if you could stop flirting for a second, please,”

Jasper nudges Monty, jostling his goggles askew. “This so takes me back, hey?”

“Nah,” Monty leans over to straighten them, “they were more subtle then. I think.”

“ _Okay_ , okay – point.” Clarke grumbles, pushing on, “Anyway, if you are all quite finished, thanks,” she elbows Raven, who is still standing somewhat behind her and is therefore in easy elbowing distance, “I was _saying_ – ”

“Just _get on with it_ – ”

“We’re not just going to attack,” she – okay, maybe sort of shouts; only sort of, “because then they’ll only retaliate. Out only option is to stop fighting the battles and to instead _win the war_.”

Blank looks greet her. Clarke grins.

“We’re not going to just attack a mission, or a person. We’re going to attack the entire thing – and we’re going to destroy the whole fucking base of operations.”

Jasper opens his mouth, but already he’s drumming a sporadic beat onto Monty’s thigh, mind grappling with new plans,

“You can’t be suggesting…”

“Oh yes,” she says, victorious despite the bruises still lingering on her stomach, “our next target is the whole entire A.R.K. operations. We’ll burn the place to the _ground_.”

 

* * *

_scene ii:_ There’s a ballroom, and it is decadent – overwhelmingly so; there are vaulted ceilings and ornate decorations, champagne glasses hanging off the hands of each and every wealthy individual on the floor, of which there are many. Polite laughter swims through the room, permeating the very nature of the game – trades of all kinds, backdoor deals and monetary exchanges, commercial goods sold for political gain.

There’s a ballroom and it is permeated by agents, A.R.K. and rogue alike. There is a gala and it is a masked ball, hidden identities and secret agendas. There is a play being set in motion but it is a simple one, where the pieces aren’t moved anywhere unexpected, where half the party continues to observe, held aloft of the sharks.

There is a ballroom and it is a peaceful mission. This is, predictably, where things turn to shit.

* * *

 

It’s only meant to be a recon mission, a straightforward scoping of any possible changes to standard ops under Abby’s rule; Clarke and Octavia scout out the floor, Bellamy and Raven on lookout. Jasper and Monty make a pair back at base operations – or at least, whatever they’re calling Octavia’s house – and everyone is safe because they have a partner checking in on their location. It was too difficult to get functioning coms for everyone and stay off the radar, not when A.R.K. had networks bugging Clarke’s normal dealers to shit. Which, fine, meant that only Clarke and Raven were plugged into Jas’ network.

 _Okay_ , so maybe it isn’t a normal recon mission, but it is _just recon_.

Clarke fiddles with her mask, tries to pass it off as sultry, only mostly succeeds.

“You have eyes on anyone yet?”

There’s a crackle in the com, the switch from one line to the next – they can only talk to either Clarke or Raven’s com, one at a time,

“ _Raven says that’s a negative. Lots of A.R.K. folks out there._ ”

Octavia tightens her grip on Clarke’s arm, cozying in closer – her mask is that of some type of vulpine creature, smiling half-moon eyes and her own painted red lips.

“Is that Monty?”

Clarke nods. The only way to have them work off the single device is to partner up, and Clarke’s pretty happy with her date thus far, even if it’s probably the wrong Blake in her arm. _Probably_ , because if she’s being frank with herself, she’s enjoying the break from the constant silent _strain_ that’s been the last month of this upside reality, where she jokes with Bellamy like they’re back in training, then turns to find him in hushed conversation with his newfound sister, faces drawn and tense.

“It’s good to have the team back,” Clarke admits, only technically replying to Octavia.

“ _Aw, I knew you missed us,”_ and, “ _It’d be so much more fun if we could_ all _talk_ ,” chime in at the same time. Octavia tucks her face into Clarke’s shoulder so as to hide her laughter.

The party goes like this for _hours_ , and the adrenaline of being in constant sight of agents wears off pretty much straight away. Seriously, if Clarke was going to get tense every time someone from A.R.K. so much as glanced her way she would really need to change her day job. Er, okay, technically also her night job.

Bad analogy.

Octavia grows weary somewhere near midnight, slinks off to the lady’s room and fails to return right away. Clarke can’t honestly blame her – she’d always copped out of nights like these, even when she’d played for the family team.

She’s just zeroed in on the bartender that’s most likely to swap her champagne out for vodka when the radio buzzes back on.

“ _Clarke._ ”

“What – ”

“ _Head to the east hallway, quick. Something’s happened._ ”

Clarke starts moving before Jasper’s finished talking – no quips means no time to spare. She swipes someone’s mask as she passes, liquor making even the most obvious of filches easy, and uses the greater coverage of a full-face jester guise to talk unhindered.

“What is it?”

There’s swearing, the com clicking in and out, “ _Fuck, it’s too difficult to – Raven is there already, she’ll fill you in. I have to,”_

“Talk to Raven, right. I’m almost there, go.”

The com clicks out without a goodbye; Clarke rounds into the east wing in seconds, her heels a loud siren on the marble floors. She tries not to think the worst, the steady reminder that east is where Octavia had been headed last, that Bellamy will _kill_ her if his sister is gone again –

She sees the bodies before she sees Raven, and then she spots Octavia decking the last agent right in the face, dropped out cold, and heaves a deep sigh of relief. _Shit_.

“We’ve been found out?” Clarke rushes up, hand already on the gun she’d snuck in.

Raven’s eyes shoot up, wide and steady, but it’s Octavia who replies.

“They found – someone recognized something of Bell’s and – ”

“They took Bellamy. _Clarke_ ,” Raven gasps, catching Clarke’s arm as she lurches forward, “Clarke I – A.R.K. agents, I’m so sorry, we were talking to Trumarks and they must’ve used a tranq on him I don’t – ”

“ _It was Murphy_ ,” Monty’s now the one in her ear, Jasper likely – must already be off trying to find a signal, _Bellamy’s_ signal, oh – “ _he spotted Bellamy, you know how he is – shoot first, question later._ ”

Octavia grips Clarke by the back of the neck, quick, and _fuck_ , Clarke doesn’t know if it’s the news of Octavia’s training but she barely flinches and then she’s forced to stare at an eyeful of bristling, furious Blake.

It’s – okay, hurtful, but _good_ , this is good.

“They know we’re with you,” Octavia says, harsh and calm, a contained hurricane, “they know _he’s_ with you. Clarke.”

Clarke blinks. And whatever it is that Octavia sees, it’s enough, because she let’s go and pulls Raven behind her – they go.

 

* * *

_scene iii:_ the house, upturned, any salvageable weapons pulled out and strapped onto any of the now three available field agents; this is how they go.

* * *

 

 “Clarke you can’t go – ”

“I am.”

“No you _can’t_!” Jasper presses, reaching for her arm – Clarke dodges. “You’re going – we don’t even have any coms left!”

Raven loads a gun and glances over. “We know.”

Clarke nods, but she’s distracted by the gun Octavia’s handling. It’s Bellamy’s spare.

“You ever shoot one of those?” She asks.

Octavia’s gaze jumps up, almost guilty. God knows why.

“Yes,” she replies, oddly seriously, “I can use it.”

There’s no point arguing – Clarke can’t handle weapons the size of Bellamy’s, not easily in any case, but Octavia’s style is a lot different from Clarke’s. More brutal in any case.

“Okay,” she says, even as Jasper continues to argue.

“ – and we don’t even know who is _in_ A.R.K. right now, for all we know Abby and Kane have amassed everyone at the entrance way just to blow you up when you get there – ”

“We won’t go in that way then,” Raven says, and now she’s looking at Clarke. Clarke grins.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “we won’t.”

Monty is the one that eventually pulls Jasper aside to stop his ranting, but in the end everyone knows that there isn’t another option besides this one. Abby is only going to keep a prisoner for so long, and she’s a hell of a lot more brutal than Jaha ever was about interrogation techniques.

“We’ll figure out a way to hack the main server,” Monty promises, and then they’re gone. Clarke kind of misses the explosions following her exits – at least this time they’d feel deserving.

They’re going to blow the fuckers to smithereens.

The drive to A.R.K. is full of clamoured planning and haphazard arguments, held tight by the shortening timetable. When Clarke had first left A.R.K. she’d faked her death, because it was easier to leave when people didn’t know to look for you, easier when there was so little security – the second time, however, she’d used the backdoor.

She’d known about it before of course, because Clarke was A.R.K. born and raised, and because no one had any reason to doubt her loyalty. It was the only reason she’d left Raven there, and the only way she had been able to grab Jasper the first time. And apparently Monty, the second time. Actually, given the amount of times Clarke’s relied on the overlooked access point, she’s more surprised that it’s yet to be stonewalled.

They pull up to the drain hole in complete silence, Octavia’s grip tight on Clarke’s arm, Raven’s face stony as she turns the car – stolen, and with barely legible license plates – off. They climb out, weapons already in hand, and stand around the tiny, incongruous hole in the ground.

This’ll be the last time any of them are able to use it. Fitting, Clarke thinks, since this is the occasion of so many other lasts.

She glances up at the faces around her.

“Everyone knows their missions?”

Raven nods – used to this, clearly; Octavia’s expression is more grim, but her reply is just as steadfast,

“We’ll meet you on the other side. And Clarke?” Octavia’s fingers tighten around the trigger of the gun, her machete strung across her back, “You get him alive. Or you’ll have me to deal with.”

Clarke doesn’t bother replying. There’s nothing left to say.

Raven’s the one to flip open the grate, and the first to leap in. Octavia follows, then Clarke, her grip around the inside ladder loose enough to allow her to slide down. The three of them run through the inner mazes quickly, each one dropping off without a word when their exit comes up.

The A.R.K. is structured like this: a leech on the city’s old sewer system, a parasite where a town used to lie – until someone destroyed it, bought it out and razed its name and history with a wave of their hand. The underground tunnels are confusing to those who try to attack it from the outside, but Clarke and Raven both have lived here, have been a part of the system that lurked here, and Octavia’s drop off site left her right where she needed to be to override the electrical grid.

Raven is in charge of the students; large in number, but fairly defenseless in the face of an enormous number of explosives. Clarke is in charge of headquarters.

Jasper, who is better with bombs than computers, but can manage both, had given her a gift before they’d stormed out of the hideaway. Clarke drops down from an overhead vent, drops right in front of Jaha’s old office.

There’s shouting, but above all she can hear Raven’s voice, knows the cadence of Raven’s threats. Clarke ignores all of this in favour of pressing Jasper’s gift onto the door, a small red light her only signal to move the fuck back.

Halfway through Raven’s hollered, “ – and if _any_ of you move – ” the device goes off, blowing the door wide open. There’s a deafening explosion and a ringing aftereffect, dust billowing all around them; it’s aptly reminiscent of the last time Clarke was here.

Through the smoke she watches Kane stride out, one hand outstretched behind him. It’s all the information Clarke needs, and in the heartbeat between Kane’s warning and his exit, she slips inside.

Abby stands alone, one hand reaching for where the door handle used to be, one hand on her hip, where her electric baton rests.

Clarke doesn’t give her enough time to react. She runs forward and grabs Abby by the hair piled high on her head, coiffed into some sort of style that’s meant to show her class high above the rest. Clarke uses this to slam her mother’s head against the wall adjacent to the rubble of the forgotten door, still on her first stride into the room. She yanks back, and then slams in into the wall next to them.

Raven should be taking care of Kane, so Clarke doesn’t bother hiding them from sight. She loosens the knife on her side and grabs it before Abby can rid herself of the daze, pushing her body against Abby’s and pinning her to the wall.

“Where,” she hisses, blade flush against her mother’s throat, “the fuck _is_ he?”

“What – ”

“ _Where is Bellamy_?”

When Clarke was twelve her mother had planted a bug in a pin and given it to Clarke as a birthday gift. Clarke had worn it for all of three days before she was brought topside and left as bait for a local cartel, picked up as ransom because they believed her to be the daughter of a foreign diplomat – all on her mother’s orders. Abby had found her before the day was over, taking down seven armed men with barely a sweat, all while Clarke sat tied to a post, neither terrified nor terribly surprised.

So when it only takes a few seconds for her mother to collect herself, despite the weight of Clarke’s blows, of Clarke’s _anger_ , Clarke is annoyed but prepared. She scowls and refuses to repeat herself, instead digs the blade just a little harder into the skin right above the carotid.

Abby doesn’t glance down at the knife, choosing instead to press closer – press into Clarke. Distantly she’s aware that this draws blood, but she isn’t a child of the A.R.K. anymore, isn’t her mother’s fucking daughter. She doesn’t let up.

“ _That’s_ what brought you back?” Abby shakes her head, whether from the blow or disdain Clarke doesn’t know, “Your torch for some degenerate mongrel that Thelonious kept out of pity?”

Clarke snarls and drives her knee up, pleasure flush through her at the gasp this wrenches out of Abby’s lips.

“ _Pity_?” Clarke breathes out, teeth clenched, “Seriously? Jaha never did _anything_ out of pity, or out of whatever fucked up sense of morality he spouted that convinced you this place is _anything_ less than slave labour.”

“Slave labour? Really Clarke, there’s no need for,” a cough, wet with blood, “melodrama.”

Clarke laughs, “Melodrama – is that what you called it when I died on one of Jaha’s _personal_ missions?”

From the look on Abby’s face, she knows exactly what Clarke’s talking about. Abby’s reaction had been anything but quiet, and Monty had loose lips.

“You do _not_ get to hold that over me,” Abby says, voice carefully quiet, “not when you let me believe that lie for _years_ – ”

“My death!” Clarke shouts, “My death for my freedom! My death for my _life_. That’s the bargain, that’s what you signed us up for when you started this _crusade_ – ”

Abby scowls, “That is _hardly_ – ”

“That’s exactly it! It is!” Clarke cries, when Abby looks ready to argue, “Jaha had leverage over _all of us_ , and he – he used it, don’t you tell me he didn’t. He took advantage of a bunch of kids’ fucked up situations and he capitalized on – ”

Clarke cuts herself off with a swear. This isn’t what she’s here to do – this _isn’t the mission_.

Abby knows this. Abby is a master manipulator, the one who teaches the rest of them how to weave puppet strings and play the whole fucking choir. Clarke only hates that her mother’s lessons never stuck with her.

“Capitalized on what Clarke?” Abby says, her voice rough – Clarke’s blade still held tight against her jugular.

“Fuck you.”

“No, why don’t you tell me exactly what it is you think I believe in?

“Are you going to tell me where you’re holding Bellamy Blake?”

“Answer the question Clarke.”

Clarke simpers. “Right. I’ll take that as a ‘no’.”

“You – ”

“For the record,” Clarke cuts her off, “I am no longer your student. I’m no longer the daughter you bore into this business, and you do not have the _right_ ,” she leans up, eyes level with the cold, cold blue of Abby’s, with the lines around her mouth and the sag in her lips, “or the privilege to tell me what to do.”

Abby opens her mouth. Clarke punches her in the jaw before any sound can escape her lips, a boxer’s punch – twists the head up and shears the cerebellum.

Abby drops, unconscious. Clarke steps over the body without a backwards glance.

Her watch reads _7:19_ ; eleven minutes have passed since the team split in the sewer system. Octavia ought to have broken into the communications by now. Sure enough, when Clarke gets over to the computer Abby works off of there’s a blinking message for her in the lines of code.

_< /ready when you are boss>_

Clarke sits down and taps into the wire system. The speaker blinks red when it turns on.

“Alright guys, tell me you know where he is.”

 _“Abby wasn’t cooperative?”_ Monty asks, clacking noise distant in the feed.

Clarke twists her knife in her hands. “No, not so much.”

Jasper’s laugh is a little more forced. “ _Not such a surprise then.”_

“Not at all actually.”

 _“Right_ ,” Monty stops typing, “ _Well that’s fine, we don’t need her help – we’ve got him Clarke._ ”

She sits up, shock-fast. There’s still the sound of shouting going on in the training room where Raven is, but it’s muted by the blood pounding to Clarke’s head.

“Where is – ”

Jasper interrupts her,

 _“Bellamy is in the holding cells in the basement. Room 3R-F._ ”

 

* * *

_scene iv:_ cement walls and cement floors and fuck it – cement fucking  _everything_ ; A.R.K. looks like something from a bad ninety’s sci-fi film, and it’s worrisome how much the place tosses Clarke into a panic;

she runs does the corridor, singular thought routing about with each step: _3R-F, 3R-F, 3R-F_

* * *

 

There’s something ironic, maybe, about the role reversal – it seems like years have passed since Clarke was the one held here, tied up in a similar cell just a few doors down. There was more chaos the last time she’d run down these halls, sure, but only now is she’s fumbling with panic and adrenaline, clumsy as she skids into the holding room.

The cell – gods, it’s the same, but it’s not. It’s – there are chairs for interrogation, ways to keep you lucid enough to talk, but the pillar Bellamy’s strapped to is _nothing_ like that. He’s bent over top of it, back curved in an upside _u,_ head listless next to his bound hands on the floor. His stomach is flayed, curled up as the highest point of his body –

Clarke is saved from parsing out the full extent of horrors – the touch of _Abby_ curling throughout all of this – by a long, held-out moan. She bites back a sob of relief and rushes into the room.

Bellamy stares up at her, his gaze slow to track her body as she drops down next to his face.

“Clarke?” He says, raspy, “Is that – am I under again?”

She can only guess what he’s on about, and none of its good. “God,” she hisses, “oh Bellamy.”

He blinks, “Is that – are you…”

“This is all my fault,” her voice is strained, barely a whisper – Bellamy groans after, Clarke’s hands fluttering around his face.

“Right, right, I’m here, I’m sorry.” She presses a finger quick against his cheek, just to see how quick the blood pools, “I’m sorry, I’m – it’s all over, I promise, we’re here. I’ve got you.”

His face is red – god knows how long he’s been left upside down like this. There’s a – a time limit, right, so it can’t have been too long if he’s talking.

“Fuck,” she hisses, “ _fuck_ , oh – don’t worry, we’ll make them regret ever – ”

“You can’t – ” he gasps, and something in Clarke collapses at the tone, “you can’t blow it up.”

She frowns, hands on the ties around his wrists, followed quickly by the knife sheathed under her forearm.

“It?”

“A.R.K.,” Bellamy’s eyes are wild, there is blood still dribbling from his mouth, “you can’t – ”

“Why can’t I?” She’s calm, pulling his arms up and using the momentum to swing his body upright, setting him straight and tugging his hands into hers. There’s a fine-tuned way to do this, depending on how long he’s been under, and Clarke refuses to cause him any more pain than needed.

But Bellamy’s having none of it – even as the blood must be draining back into his body, even though Clarke knows firsthand how painful this part is, he flips her hold and pins her fingers, literally capturing her attention.

“The others here – they’re not, ah,” a pained keen, and Clarke sees red, “you know they’re not – responsible.”

It’s a solid argument, only because they’ve had it before. Clarke loosens her hands from his, something that’s cruelly easy to do, and goes to work on the chains around his ankles.

The abrasions there make everything much harder.

“We can’t leave this place standing,” she says, trying to be reasonable, even when she catches sight of a fucking _hole_ going through his foot.

“We can’t – ”

“I know, I know,” she soothes, “We can’t kill the kids.”

“No, Clarke – _Clarke_ ,” there’s wonder in his voice now, child-like, “You’re really here?”

There are locks on the chains, ones she has to pick. It requires attention, requires Clarke not to get up right now and raze this place to the ground. Requires her not to get up and hold Bellamy and never let go.

She settles for a soothing hum. “Yes, Bellamy, I’m here. I’m right here.”

“When did you…you can’t be here.”

“Well _you’re_ here.”

“You _can’t_ – ”

She smiles, just a quick, unamused quirk of her lips, “Again with the ‘can’t’s.”

He makes a pained noise, “You can’t kill them Clarke. They’re just kids.”

Clarke pitches forward, her head resting on his shin, hands still deftly fumbling with the locks. One of Bellamy’s hands curls down and twines in her hair – softly, a barely-there pressure, but it loosens the knot in her stomach a little.

“Okay,” she whispers, tears in her eyes – _fuck it_ , “okay, we’ll come up with something else.”

The lock pops open with a _click_. She unlatches the chain looped around each ankle and stands up.

Bellamy’s still wearing the clothing he was caught in, only now he’s missing a shirt. There are bruises all over, thin lines of blood that speak of careful, planned injuries –

Clarke circles around and grabs him under the shoulder. He’s muttering under his breath, but she forces herself to ignore it for the moment. She may curse her training some days, but this is the life they put themselves in – were _put in_ – and she’s always been great at dissociating.

They stumble out into the corridor, where the speakers are set up. There are cameras in interrogation, but it’s a one-way communication.

“ _Oh thank god,_ ” a voice crackles overhead, “ _you’ve got him_.”

Bellamy startles under her, the arm that she’s looped around her shoulder tightening its grip.

“Is that – Monty?”

Clarke actually grins, “Yeah.”

“ _Hey big man_ ,” Monty says, “ _glad to see you alive._ ”

“ _Not quite well though, hey_.” Jasper quips.

Bellamy tries to look at Clarke. She shrugs. “What? Really, what computer tech is left here to fend them off?”

He’s clearly coming ‘round, because he manages a chuckle – it’s cut short by a pained grunt, but is there nonetheless. “Right, of course.”

The stumble back up to the main floor is painful – Bellamy groans and has to pause every few steps and Clarke seethes through her need to punch something. Maybe punch Bellamy, who is determined to jog his way into an early death, each quick stride faltering and trembling and _completely unnecessary_ , since Monty lets them know straight away that Raven and Octavia have the place under control still.

Bellamy gives her a look at this, raised eyebrows tinged with exasperation, and Clarke has to fight back the relief pooling in her gut.

“Jasper,” she says by way of explanation.

Bellamy’s breath comes in short pants, but he grins.

“Hostages?”

“Just _technically_.” Clarke doesn’t really think that it counts since Raven has no intention of using Jasper’s bombs until they’re well clear of the place. Not that the A.R.K. agents know that of course, not when Raven and Octavia both ooze anger from every pore.

Well, they do, at least until Clarke and Bellamy make it to the holding area, which is where Octavia, now back from the grids, drops her gun and lurches forward, running to them until she has her arms wrapped around Bellamy’s torso, trapping Clarke under her grip.

Raven – thankfully – is more collected and continues to stare down the recruits. Who, Clarke notes, are fairly pissed.

She disentangles and leaves Bellamy in his sister’s hands.

They had a speech planned – well, _sort of_ , because this was a mission on the fly, but the drive was _long_ and _awful_ , and anyway. They’d _had_ a speech planned, and Raven looks about ready to give it, still furious and frustrated and probably more than a fair bit scared.

That’s – that’s good. Clarke feels all that too, and she reaches for Raven’s arm only because she knows this is an awful thing. Being back in A.R.K. is never not going to be painful, and Clarke is never going to not hate it.

But _Bellamy_ had…he’s right. She looks around and Raven’s silent still, because Clarke is gripping her arm like a vise, and so is everyone else. There isn’t a single murmur, every face trained up at the four of them. Jasper and Monty are a crack team – one infiltrating every wireless system possible, the other a mastermind at electrical grids and the various ways of fucking them up – and every one of these agents know this. Doesn’t dare move because fuck, who knows what it’ll set off.

So Clarke stares out at the sea of silent faces and she – she gets it. She does. They’re just kids, really. And they’ve been just as fucked over as Clarke has, as Octavia and Bellamy and all of them. The A.R.K. takes kids with bad pasts and no future and offers them this glorious shining beacon of hope – become a protector. Fight for your country. Be _something_ , when you never though you could. The take kids and rob them of their youth, of their future, force them to be adults when they’re barely –

It’s damning. She’s _so fucking angry_.

“Octavia?” Clarke doesn’t glance over, well aware her voice carries.

There’s a beat, then, “Yeah?”

“How secure is the house, exactly?”

Raven’s staring at her now. Octavia swears, but Clarke’s pretty sure it’s not directed at her.

“It’s ah,” there’s shifting, Bellamy saying something too quiet to be heard, “It’s secure. I’m – seriously Bellamy, what the fuck,”

“The _house_ ,” Bellamy hisses – Clarke tries not to think anything of it.

Octavia’s smart, Clarke’s always really respected that about her, she’s not some dumb floozy that got sucked up in Zemla’s tracks. So it takes her only a brief moment – during which Clarke’s certain there’s some silent Blake communication going on – to understand.

“Yes, the house is secure. The dweebs back home made sure of that.”

“ _Hey,_ ” a voice crackles overhead, “ _we resent that_.”

Raven leans down, her breath tickling Clarke’s ear, “What about transport?”

“There’s vehicles upstairs,” Clarke admits, “Abby keeps some for emergencies. I know where to go.”

“And Abby? She’s not – ”

“Just unconscious. But I – we’re not leaving this place standing. And I’m not taking her out of it.”

Something occurs to her then, but she doesn’t want to ask because having a conversation about Kane’s possible dead body is not something they need to be doing in front of a handful of agents they’re about to try and take home.

Take _home_. And doesn’t that just seal it right there.

“Alright, here’s the deal,” several faces shoot up to hers, others stay wary on the speakers Monty was just on, “in ten minutes we’re going to blow the entire A.R.K. site up.”

Of course, then there’s furious whispering, a few shouts,

“Why would we believe – ”

“There’s no way you could have – ”

“Octavia here,” Clarke looks back now, and thank _god_ both Blakes are smiling – sort of, “has been helping our techs back home hack into a backed system that Jaha set up when he began running A.R.K. – a way to bury all his secrets. We don’t have to set up our own devices because they have _always_ been here. One click from our techs and this whole place goes under.”

Clarke takes a deep breath, steadying herself. “So the way we see it, you have three choices.”

“One,” Raven says, looking over to Clarke and grinning, “stay here and die with your commanders.”

That – well, it answers her questions, she guesses.

Octavia hollers from the back, “ _Two_ – you leave A.R.K. and try and forge new identities for yourself. It’ll be…” her voice tapers off, “Tricky. But you can do it.”

Clarke knows, from the last month and from Bellamy himself, that Octavia had entertained thoughts of leaving Zemla long before the two of them ever showed up to give her an out. Clarke had had to make do with forging new passports and documents plenty of times while on the run, but then again, Clarke had been trained for that shit storm for a lot longer than these agents had.

“Three,” Bellamy’s voice is hoarse, from disuses or overuse, Clarke doesn’t bother to think, “you can come with us. Start again. There won’t be any missions or any opportunities to expunge your records but…we can help you start over again.”

Clarke bares her teeth, all too aware that it’s not really a comforting look.

“A.R.K. has screwed you over. They have given you one, solitary option to live your life. We’re offering you some more.”

Raven stalks forward. “You know most of us already. Clarke is an enemy to A.R.K.; I’m a mole, and Bellamy was– _is_ –a hard ass who has probably protected all of your sorry faces at least once before. You _know_ us and the things we are capable of.”

Bellamy chuckles and makes some sort of aborted attempt at a wave. A few faces in the crowd smile, like a flinch – quick and involuntary.

Raven is the only one left of them who holds a weapon – Octavia has long since forgotten hers, Clarke’s down to knives alone, and Bellamy is _definitely_ too weak to put up much of a fight. Still, it’s symbolic at least, and a little daring, when Raven bends down to drop her automatic.

“You have all been fed lies, likely your entire life. So the choice is yours whether to believe us or not. But we are saying that it _is_ your decision,” Raven holds up her hands, “You have ten minutes to decide.”

 

* * *

_scene v_ : there’s blankets  _everywhere_ , strewn across couches and sofas and other pieces of mismatched furniture pilfered over the last few days; there is game in the freezer, more apples than anyone knows how to explain in the fridge, and a rotating game of cups whereby everyone is certain that no less than five have been stolen and are now being kept for ransom.

* * *

 

“Forty seven,”

“Shut up.”

“ _Forty seven_.”

“Oh my god, Jasper, I can _see that_.”

Jasper shoves his face into his hands. It’s muffled, but she can still pick out the _forty seven_ that he moans through his fingers.

“When did you become such an anxiety-ridden mess?”

He looks up at her, eyes wide, “When the four of you decided to adopt _forty seven former assassins._ From your old boss!”

Clarke doesn’t correct him.

She shrugs, “Whatever. It’ll work out.”

Someone – Silver, she thinks – reaches out for one of the sandwiches Monty’s making, only to have his hand slapped away by a nearby former recruit. Miller, one of Bellamy’s favorite agents, is the man currently in the midst of guarding the kitchen from wayward fingers. She can already see the fight in the making, because apparently getting enough food for fifty odd-what people is hard to coordinate.

There’s a muffled shout from a room…somewhere else. Above, maybe. Clarke sighs.

“Probably,” she amends, and Jasper moans again.

Later, when night has halfway gone and they’ve managed to deal with almost every nightmare-induced panic attack, Clarke finds herself hovering over the main living room, trying to count the number of bodies crammed into sleeping bags and mentally adjusting the spaces they have left to try and fit beds into. The only shame about blowing up A.R.K. is that they hadn’t thought to steal any of the furniture.

(Okay, sure, there’s also the whole ugly set of feelings about leaving her mother to what is presumably her death, although Clarke will never know for sure if Abby was in the explosion or not; and then all of the existing missions that they’re going to have to try and wrap up – well, it probably would’ve been _smarter_ to leave the place operational.

Yeah, fine, fine, Clarke’s super dramatic, what _ever_. The explosion had been _so_ cathartic.)

A hand lays gentle against her back, pulling her out of her thoughts, and she has to bite down the sudden tension. Lips press to her ear and then,

“You get chased out of your room as well?”

Clarke sinks back.

“Hey,” she greets, unable to stop the soft curl of a smile, “And yeah, I guess so. I didn’t expect – there’s just so many of them.”

Bellamy nods, his jaw brushing against her cheek. They’re pressed tight together, voices low, kids all about them slumbering on. It’s been barely a week since they’d all returned here, Clarke busy with trying to coordinate the future into the space of a few days, Bellamy holed up and forcibly restrained into resting up. She’s barely seen him, but it feels like…well, like she never left him in the first place.

 _Fuck_ , she’s getting sappy in her old age.

“It’s good though.” He says. “I’m…glad.”

“You sound surprised.”

The hand on her back sneaks around to her waist, and she lets herself be moved against the wall so that Bellamy’s front is pressed to hers.

“I am,” Bellamy says, “and I’m not.”

“Oh?”

Rather than explaining himself he shuffles closer and brings a hand up to her face.

“You got any plans after this?”

Clarke blinks. Bellamy’s a strong line pressed against her – she can feel his breath, hot against her cheek, his heartbeat strong under a hand she hadn’t even realized she’d put on his chest. It’s – she feels like settling. She feels stickily slow, transparent. There are _forty seven_ kids in this house; Octavia’s house, technically, but she thinks maybe that’s not the full story.

She twists the fabric of his shirt underhand and says, “After what exactly,” and then he leans down and kisses her.

It’s a slow kiss, unhurried – Bellamy’s hand strokes her cheek, his thumb drawing circles in her skin, and Clarke leans up and pulls him closer, wedges her body into his. Bellamy’s smiling into the kiss, which makes it kind of hard to get any farther, but Clarke can hardly blame him when she can barely keep the giddy grin off her own. But it’s, it’s perfect. It feels like coming home.

They pull apart just as slowly, one of Clarke’s hands buried in his hair, carding through the curls at the nape of his neck – it’s getting long. They’re going to need to start talking about permanent solutions to the issue of hygiene at their house.

She’s – embarrassingly – breathless. “So,” she says, smiling when Bellamy snickers and drops another kiss to her forehead, “this is…we’re really doing this?”

He presses another to the corner of her lip. “What – us? Or the impromptu family thing?”

Clarke isn’t sure there’s a difference. She runs her hand across the line of his jaw, where a bruise is still settling. There’s a lot of those.

She’s tired of there being a lot of those.

“Both.”

And they know she doesn’t just mean them, because her and Bellamy have felt like a tenuously permanent thing for…ever, it seems. And it’s not just the agents slumbering in every nook and cranny of Octavia’s house – it’s laying down the rest. It’s being _done_ with fighting every moment of every day just to get by.

Bellamy nudges her face up and when he presses his lips to hers its fiercer, more heated; like he’s trying to prove a point by licking his way into her mouth. Clarke laughs into it and Bellamy bites down on her lip, gentle, and breathes,

“Yeah, if you – ” he whispers, because Clarke’s already nodding, “then yes. I’m in for – for all of it.”

And sure, they have a lot to sort through. Not just the muddling on both sides, of which there’s been a lot – but the reality of this new situation. Clarke’s been alone for so long, even in A.R.K., and then it’d just been her and Jasper for years on end. There’s – it’ll be a lot more, later.

But for now, Clarke figures they’ve deserved at least this piece of happiness. She uses the hand around Bellamy’s neck to pull him back down into another gentle kiss.

She’s home.

( _Seriously_ , so fucking sappy.)

[ **fin** ]


End file.
